Word: oiled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...same time, French companies that did big business with Baghdad want to resume a lucrative connection. State-owned oil giants Elf Aquitaine and Total were the first Western firms to make contact with Baghdad after the war. Iraqi authorities proposed to give the two French companies a rich production monopoly developing the Majnoun Islands and Nahr Umar oilfields, which could produce 1 million bbl. a day. In exchange, the Iraqis wanted the French to lobby for lifting U.N. sanctions. Since then, according to the weekly Canard Enchaine, representatives of the two companies have made more than 40 trips to Baghdad...
Baghdad is trying to attract Russia by offering major contracts for oil exploration and rebuilding refineries. In February the Italian gas company Italgaz sent a high-level delegation to Iraq, followed last month by representatives of 30 leading Italian companies, including Fiat autos and International Scientifica, a medical-equipment maker. British, German and Japanese firms have also been poking around the bazaar...
...unprecedented exercise in democracy by the authoritarian standards of the Arabian peninsula. But for the past two weeks, armies from the conservative North and socialist South have waged bloody but inconclusive armor and artillery battles in bitter rivalry over the division of political power and the distribution of oil revenues. "Unity is dead," said an Arab League | official in Cairo, and so were hopes that political pluralism had taken root in traditionally monarchical Arabia...
...atmosphere of rampant lawlessness -- kidnapping tourists, oil executives and diplomats is a favored way of registering complaints against the government -- tensions between the North and South increased. Al-Beidh's walkout crippled the government's capacity to act, even preventing the passage of a budget for this year. In January hundreds of people protested price rises in the North. With inflation exceeding 100% and devaluation of the Yemeni riyal eroding incomes averaging less than $600 a year, the government feared a recurrence of the food-price riots of December 1992, in which more than 100 people were killed...
...attempt at reconciliation three months ago, brokered by Jordan, collapsed, and clashes quickly erupted between Northern and Southern army troops. Al-Beidh accused Saleh of siphoning off oil revenues from a newly opened field in a Southern province. While Yemen remains one of the Arab world's poorest and most populous states, the discovery of oil 10 years ago gave both North and South hope that their 14 million people would no longer be dependent on the largesse of their wealthy neighbors. Until the Gulf War, Yemen relied on money sent home by millions of Yemenis in the oil sheikdoms...