Word: much
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Cutting back on consumption is not enough. Tanzania uses roughly half as much petroleum as in 1972, but its oil bill has risen 900%, and now eats up half of all earnings from the country's exports. Complains Rodrigo Carazo, President of Costa Rica: "Our 1972 oil needs cost $11.8 million. Our 1979 needs will cost at least $103 million. The barrel of oil that we could buy in exchange for 57 Ibs. of bananas or 3 Ibs. of coffee in 1972 now costs us 440 Ibs. of bananas or 24 Ibs. of coffee...
...scarce and expensive. Prices of water buffaloes, which do not consume diesel fuel but do produce free fertilizer, have soared. Some Thai officials are rather relieved that their bureaucratic bungling has stalled the pace of industrialization. Says one official: "If we had been more successful, Thailand would be in much bigger trouble today...
...their U.S. income taxes. Every time Saudi Arabia increases its oil prices, Aramco's local tax payments rise, and so do its benefits under the U.S.'s so-called foreign tax credit. President Carter has vowed to tighten up on the credits, but he has not made much progress partly because Aramco's owners argue that they need the benefits to stay competitive in world markets...
...would have no effect on the company's operations beause Aramco would continue to run them for a fee. But skeptics suggest that the takeover might already have been consummated. They contend that the Saudi government's action in providing Aramco since last July with oil at much less than its real market value was in part to compensate the company, free of capital gains taxes, for the takeover of its assets...
Company officers are extremely wary of divulging details of their business, and slips can prove costly. Example: much of Saudi Arabia's ability to restrain OPEC from driving up prices has depended on whether the Saudis can convincingly threaten to boost production enough to create periodic petroleum gluts. Yet high Aramco officers are among the few people who know the real size of Saudi Arabia's production capacity. Last spring Exxon and Socal divulged to the Justice Department, in its ongoing anti-trust investigation of the oil industry, that Aramco had little spare capacity. That statement helped...