Word: petroleum
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Predicting the final shape of an energy plan is tricky. Energy politics don't divide along party lines. When the time comes to vote, liberal Democrats from oil-patch states, like Oklahoma Congressman Mike Synar, tend to line up with the petroleum industry. Detroit Democrats like Congressman Dingell back away from fuel-efficiency standards that are opposed by hometown automakers. And defenders of the environment can still turn up on both sides of the aisle. On Aug. 4, two days after the invasion of Kuwait, the House voted 281 to 82 effectively to ban for one year any drilling...
Workers last week began placing miles of plastic booms around the desalination facilities. Because petroleum generally floats on water, such booms, which extend up to 1 m (3 ft.) below the surface, can contain a slick. The next step is to put skimming equipment inside the booms and begin scooping up the oil, either with vacuuming devices or by drawing oil-absorbent plastic ropes through it and wringing them out. Some of the crude can be salvaged as kerosene...
...military lexicon needs a new term: "eco-war." What better way to describe the acts of environmental carnage committed last week in the Persian Gulf, where the air is thick with the smoke from burning oil wells and a wide swath of crude petroleum is fouling the water and devastating wildlife? If these disasters brought to mind the Exxon Valdez, the news of air attacks on nuclear- and chemical-weapons facilities raised the specter of Chernobyl and Bhopal. The environment itself has become both a weapon and a victim...
...smell: a 16-km (10-mile) band of crude, so thick in places that the water heaved like mud. Iraq is believed to have opened the spigots of Kuwait's main supertanker-loadin g pier, the Sea Island terminal, 16 km offshore from the country's major petroleum refinery and loading complex at Mina Al-Ahmadi. Through pipes leading from giant storage tanks, millions of gallons of crude had been poured straight into the water. At the same time, at least three tankers docked there were deliberately being emptied into the gulf...
...search for new revenues, politicians gazed covetously last week at some very rich oil companies whose profits have skyrocketed following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing run-up of petroleum prices. The firms included Chevron, which last week reported earnings of $633 million for the fourth quarter of 1990, an eightfold increase over the final quarter of the previous year. After such reports, Democrats Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut introduced a Senate bill for a windfall- profits tax on Big Oil to help...