Word: oiled
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...world's oil exporters were suddenly looking at a loss of revenues that could have exceeded $100 billion. That's enough petrodollars to get otherwise reluctant countries to negotiate, including OPEC members Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and non-OPEC Mexico. Their plan: cut back production to firm prices. And OPEC's tried-and-true remedy may work again. News of a pending deal pulled prices up to almost $17 a barrel last week. The market response indicates confidence that the exporters will make their cuts stick. And if they don't, prices will fall again...
...merely making room for others to capture its business. Venezuela, on a high-octane drive to double production within a decade, was not about to cut back unless non-OPEC countries shared the pain.That insistence reflects reality: OPEC accounts for only 55% of total world crude-oil exports. In fact, the second largest exporter is nonmember Norway...
What a change from a little more than a year ago, when many expected a tightening oil market to send prices soaring above the $25-per-bbl. level that oil then commanded. How sweet is it for motorists, then, to have enjoyed gasoline prices that, adjusted for inflation, are lower than at any time in memory--and lower than average prices during the Depression. Even the higher crude-oil prices of the past few days, should they hold, will add only 5[cents] to 10[cents] per gal.--still keeping retail gasoline prices near their historic lows...
What could generate such a turnabout in our petroleum fortunes? The industry has changed fundamentally since previous oil shocks that seemed to portend ever higher prices. Oil is coming into the market from every corner of the globe. Current exploration hot spots include the newly independent nations around the Caspian Sea and offshore West Africa. This diversification acts as an insurance policy against supply disruptions. The growing role of natural gas in the overall energy mix provides a further buffer. Information technology has also allowed the industry to search for oil and make a profit at $15 per bbl., about...
While this process is happening in almost every sector of the economy, it is particularly striking in oil, in which politics and business, almost from the beginning, have been so intertwined. One of the lasting lessons of the oil crisis is the way in which markets can, given flexibility, sort out what seem to be intractable problems. Oil companies are no longer seen as "national champions" essential to national objectives--not when oil is bought and sold every day in huge volumes on the futures markets...