Word: petroleum
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...modern industry can never be sure what sciences it will need. In a new book, Petroleum Microbiology (Elsevier Press; $9.50), Professor Ernest Beerstecher Jr. of the University of Texas tells how the hard-muscled oil industry is both helped and bedeviled by lowly bacteria. To begin with, the oil itself was originally formed by bacteria out of organic remains sinking to the bottom of shallow seas. Bacteria still live in oil sands deep underground; many kinds of petroleum and oilfield brine are alive with them. One species lives only on the tops of salt domes, the telltale indicators...
...geologists have learned to use bacteria as an aid to exploration, e.g., certain important layers of rock can be identified by the fossil microorganisms imbedded in the strata. Some of these are remains of bacteria that lived freakishly on iron or sulphur compounds; others, still living, get along on petroleum itself. Most common soils contain bacteria that can "eat" hydrocarbons; if oil is spilled on the soil, they multiply enthusiastically, and soon the oil disappears...
...Antimony-I 24 is being used to aid in the separation of different kinds of petroleum moving through pipelines. When a pipeline is finished pumping one type of oil and wants to shift to another without interrupting the flow, some antimony-I 24 is put at the beginning of the new batch. The antimony's rays, detected by suitable instruments, warn the pipeline operator at the other end that it is time to switch valves. Commissioner Campbell estimates that antimony I 24, now used in most pipelines, saves $500,000 a year...
...readjustments were still being made in many an industry. In the petroleum industry, sales have not come up to summer estimates. As a result of overproduction, wholesale gasoline prices skidded on the Gulf Coast and Eastern seaboard, and retail-gas wars were flaring up east of the Rockies. The Texas Railroad Commission (which controls the state's oil production) announced that it had cut August allowables to 2,721,104 barrels a day because of a drop in demand...
ROYAL DUTCH PETROLEUM will soon be traded again on the New York Stock Exchange. Stock was dropped 18 years ago for failure to comply with SEC regulations. The Big Board's governors authorized Royal Dutch to list 24,327,312 shares, par value 50 guilders (about...