Word: oils
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Thirty-eight years later the search for oil was renewed in earnest. The War had ended, leaving Europe's battle-torn fields producing only a third of their pre-War yield of beet-sugar. On the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, Cuban cane-sugar soared from 6 to 22½? per pound...
Foreign and domestic capital poured in and sugar operations mushroomed to enormous proportions-80% of Cuba's entire industry. Sugar refineries, steaming night and day, burned anything they could lay their hands on, even green trees. Cuba's legislature passed a law allowing crude oil destined for the sugar industry to come in duty free, but the demand for fuel was insatiable and oil companies began to look into the old possibility of a big native supply from which pipe lines could be run directly to the refineries...
...Cuba was footing a dance to sugar millions. Jewels, silks, perfumes, palaces, race horses and solid gold plate were the order of the day. Oil companies, in step with sugar, leased thousands of acres for exploration. In May 1920, when the dance was maddest, people suddenly began to talk of Europe's next sugar-beet crop. By December the crop was a reality-nearly 50% larger than the year before. Cuba's boom was over; private fortunes went down the spout with the island's banking system; the dream of large-scale oil production faded and concessions...
...years later, the possibility of Cuba's harboring a great oil reservoir is again under investigation. Geologists are examining cores from thousands of feet below the surface; radio seismograph crews are sounding in Cuba's hills. Designed to bolster the island's limited revenues, the new petroleum law passed by the legislature all but forces activity on concessions by requiring each concessionaire to drill within five years at least one well to 4,000 feet unless oil is struck at lesser depth; the alternative to such exploitation is Government confiscation...
Only present production in Cuba is from small shallow wells at Bacuranao, Guanabacoa and Corralillo. Last year total Cuban output of crude oil...