Word: bbl
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...system technically lifts the official, or "bench mark," price of crude to a record $18 per bbl., up fully 42% since the first of the year. That is the price that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will charge. The other ten OPEC members, which account for almost two-thirds of the cartel's exports, will sell at $20 per bbl. Reason: most are already charging an average of $17.50 per bbl. as a result of premiums and surcharges, and a rise of a mere 500 per bbl. hardly seemed worth the trouble...
Whatever the new base level, all members will also get to charge so-called differential premiums of up to $3.50 per bbl. The differentials, which traditionally have been set at no more than a small fraction of the base price, are supposed to be applied solely to specially attractive crudes, such as Nigeria's and Libya's low-sulfur oil, which is now much in demand for refining into gasoline. Veteran observers of past OPEC behavior expect the differentials soon to be turning up as part of the price for almost any grade of cartel crude...
...Libya, which pumps some 2 million bbl. daily and is the cartel's fifth largest producer, were to take such a step, the additional squeeze on world petroleum supplies would be devastating. Even though Gaddafi has made bombastic threats before and never carried them out, the shares of Occidental Petroleum and Marathon Oil, both big users of Libyan crude, came under such intense selling pressure on the New York Stock Exchange that trading had to be briefly halted. Only later was it learned that the irresponsible threat was probably inspired by nothing more than pique. Earlier in June...
...Geneva, Yamani did his best to persuade the cartel to hold the line at $18 per bbl. At one point, the Harvard-educated sheik grew so frustrated with the demands of Iran, Libya and Algeria, which were calling for a base price of at least $25 "to $26 per bbl., that he threatened to walk out of the conference. That led OPEC Chairman Mani Said Utaiba, of the United Arab Emirates, to convene a rump meeting in his private upstairs suite. It was during that gathering, at which Utaiba served dates from his home country and Arab spiced tea, that...
...acute by holding back production. The response of the industrial nations, a forced limit on petroleum imports, will, their leaders agree, bring about a lowering of living standards. In the immediate future, the U.S. most likely will be able to accomplish its goal of holding imports to 8.5 million bbl. per day only by taking one of two harsh steps: either rationing gasoline or eliminating price controls on it. The former would lead to a bureaucratic mess; the latter would probably aggravate inflation. The choice is hard. But, as in so many matters in the crisis caused by OPEC, there...