Word: slicked
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ministers fiddle, a menacing oil slick continues to spread
...their prosperity for decades, but now the wealthy sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf are almost literally swimming in the gooey, black liquid. Since March, three damaged Iranian wells have been spewing some 7,000 bbl. a day of crude into the waters of the gulf, producing an oil slick that is roughly the size of New Jersey and that may rank as the second largest in history.* Much of the menacing sludge rests just below the surface of the gulf's usually crystalline waters, but it is betrayed by a bluish sheen that can be seen easily from...
...ships that came near the damaged platforms would be treated as military targets. Iranian officials say they had offered Texan Red Adair, the world's best-known oil troubleshooter, $1 million to supervise a repair effort, but that he refused to work under war-time conditions. The immense slick developed, says a Western diplomat in Bahrain, because "no one will go out there and cap a well unless he's sure he is not going to be shot...
...floating around the gulf will cause extensive, and permanent, damage to the gulf. Only small fragments of the glutinous mass have washed ashore thus far, but a small change in the predominantly southeasterly wind could drive the main body of the slick onto hundreds of miles of Arab coastline. Says an environmentalist in the gulf: "The slick is not going to go around looking for a home forever." In Qatar alone, the tide of oil could close down two desalination plants that now produce 37 million gal. of fresh water daily, most of the supply for the population...
Thanks to some slick parliamentary maneuvering and old-fashioned political horse trading, two hotly debated pieces of social legislation came to the end of a long legislative haul last week virtually intact...