Word: oil
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tapped just about all the easily recoverable oil and gas it is likely to find within its own land area. Now the most promising areas for new finds of these fuels lie offshore, under water depths ranging from a few yards to 1,000 ft. or more. Oilmen have been drilling into the outer continental shelf since the mid-'50s, and the 20,000 wells they have sunk, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico, account for 14% of the nation's current domestic oil production and 23% of its gas. The next place they hope to develop...
Estimates of how much oil could be tapped off Alaska's entire outer continental shelf (OCS), including the Beaufort Sea, range up to 25 billion bbl., or nearly three times the reserves in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay field. Some oilmen believe that with a big development effort, Alaska's OCS could eventually produce 4 million bbl. a day, or enough to replace half of the nation's present oil imports. The Canadians, who have been drilling in their sector of the Beaufort Sea for two years, are very bullish on it: this fall Dome Petroleum...
...controversy surrounding Aramco underscores the internal tensions within the U.S. over the nation's alarming dependence on foreign crude. The oil industry must have billions of dollars to expand U.S. drilling, exploration and other energy-producing investments that are needed to escape OPEC's hold, and Aramco's megaprofits are a big help. But to ensure those profits and continued access to foreign crude, the company has to walk a finer and finer line between the steadily diverging interests of producing and consuming states...
...area. Oilmen will mount their rigs on artificial islands built of gravel. Those located in water depths of more than 42 ft., the Government insists, must be left unused for two years, to see if they can withstand the ice; moving ice packs could knock over the rigs, causing oil spills. Moreover, the companies will be allowed to drill only five to seven months each year, starting in November. Reason: at other times the big bowheads, which weigh as much as 45 tons, migrate through the sea, and environmentalists are afraid that the drilling might disturb their breeding and calving...
...oilmen feel that Washington is moving too slowly in leasing new offshore areas. The Interior Department recently stepped up its schedule of lease sales over the next five years, from 26 to 30, but that will do nothing in the near future to halt the gradual decline in U.S. oil production that began in 1971. Oil executives say that given the time it takes to develop offshore fields-the usual lag between discovery and full production is seven to ten years -leasing should be expanded sharply. After all, they point out, while other countries have leased as much...