Word: petroleum
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...most sensitive barometer for world oil prices. During 1979 and 1980 leaping spot market prices encouraged oil exporters to begin raising their long-term contract prices to levels that eventually reached $40 per bbl. With demand now ebbing, more and more companies have been dumping their excess crude and petroleum products on the spot market. By last week spot prices had slipped to a low of $30.75. A market expert with one of the top multinational oil companies points out that even the Soviets, who have long been major exporters to East bloc nations, are dumping oil on the spot...
...sagging spot market has also begun forcing the producers to cut their long-term prices. During the past year the average price charged by the 13 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has dropped 2.9%, to $33.80 per bbl. Last week the state-owned British National Oil Corp. (BNOC) startled the petroleum industry by knocking $1.50 off its quoted price. Britain is not a member of OPEC, but BNOC competes directly with the state-owned oil companies of Libya, Algeria and Nigeria. Oil traders now expect those nations also to shave prices...
Only one OPEC supplier, Saudi Arabia, which is currently exporting about 7.5 million to 8 million bbl. a day, could cut back production sharply enough to tighten the world market without doing grave damage to its own internal economy. Though Saudi Petroleum Minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani has been purposefully vague about his country's plans, reports out of the Persian Guff banking center of Bahrain last week suggested that the desert kingdom may be preparing to trim production at least somewhat this spring...
...harvest. As a result, Moscow has been cutting back on its aid to all of Southeast Asia. The Soviets were forced to reduce their 1981 grain shipments to Kampuchea by almost half, from a promised 100,000 tons to only 55,000. The price Viet Nam pays br Soviet petroleum rose from $4 to $16 per bbl. in 1981. This year, oil-import subsidies for Laos have been ended...
...Alan Greenspan, who was President Ford's chief economic adviser, calls the idea "the equivalent of food stamps for undernourished corporations." And well-fed ones too. Highly profitable IBM bought $100 million to $200 million of future tax benefits from money-losing Ford last year. Occidental Petroleum, which pays little U.S. tax on its large profits because all are earned abroad, picked up extra cash by selling its unusable benefits to an insurance company. The leasing provision is expected to cost the Treasury a total of $27 billion over the next five years...