Word: bbl
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...reasons: 1) after repeated State Department warnings, the number of Americans in Lib ya, mainly with oil companies, has been cut to fewer than 400, and those apparently refuse to leave; 2) the current oil glut makes it easier for the U.S. to replace the 120,000 bbl. per day (2% of U.S. oil imports) it has been buying from Libya and might make it more difficult for Libya to sell that amount ( 1 3 % of its oil exports) elsewhere...
...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...
Meanwhile, Iran, which is having trouble selling enough of its 600,000 bbl. in daily exports to pay for its war of attrition with Iraq, last week announced plans to cut $1 off its quoted price of approximately $33.20 per bbl., thereby threatening to spread price cutting to the Persian Gulf. OPEC's president, Sheik Mani Said al-Oteiba of the United Arab Emirates, last week indicated that further price reductions might force the organization to institute some cuts in output in order to firm up prices. But OPEC has never in its history been able to agree upon...
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...
That false sense of security was shattered by the Iranian revolution which resulted in a loss of more than 6 million bbl. daily on world markets and pushed the price of oil from $12.50 to $34 per bbl. Veteran oil industry watchers are always nervous that a comparable upheaval in Saud Arabia would cause even more dramatic price increases, and have even more disastrous consequences for Western economies. Thus the curren oversupply of oil should be used by the West as an opportunity to decrease further its dependence upon OPEC rather than as an excuse to ignore an energy crisis...