Word: petroleum
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...threshold for the first time in 17 months. Last week the futures price of West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark U.S. crude, reached $20.15 a bbl., up some 50% since last October. The rally largely reflects an unexpectedly successful campaign by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, along with several non-OPEC countries, to curb their output and reduce the world's oversupply. Since early January, OPEC production has fallen about 3.5 million bbl. a day, to some 19 million...
While the price of petroleum is still a long way from its $35-a-bbl. peak in 1981, the U.S. is sliding back to a level of dependence on foreign sources not seen since the oil-shock days of the 1970s. January petroleum imports averaged 8.1 million bbl. a day, up almost 21% from a year ago and surpassing domestic production (8 million bbl.) for the first time in more than a decade. The import surge has hampered efforts to shrink the U.S. trade deficit, and rising prices have aggravated inflationary pressure...
...supply of crude, as OPEC did in the 1970s? In the short run, the U.S. would not experience dire shortages. A Commerce Department study found that in the event of war, the country's demand for fuel could be met by domestic production and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Created 13 years ago, the reserve is now up to 515 million bbl., equivalent to about three months' total consumption, stored in salt caverns along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana...
...Government study concluded, however, that if foreign supplies were cut off oil prices would quickly skyrocket, inevitably sending the economy into a tailspin. Because production takes years to gear up, the U.S. petroleum industry could not fully make up the slack of the lost imports. Says John Boatwright, Exxon's chief domestic economist: "It's not a garden hose you can turn...
...unneeded and bloated projects--usually called "white elephants"--the quick reduction of capital flowing to these nations, and most of all a crash in the prices of products the countries export. For example, the 1985 crash in tin prices helped crush Bolivia's economy, and the fall in petroleum prices restricted the flow of money into Mexico and Venezuela...