Word: bbl
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...production and exploration. Also, any estimate of how much oil or natural gas will be produced in any given future year depends heavily on a guess as to what the prices will be. Expensive recovery methods that were not economical when the world oil price was about $2.70 a bbl. are profitable now that OPEC has jacked up the price...
Probable Output. As a rule, oilmen use two basic figures in assessing world oil potential: proven reserves and possible, or probable, reserves. Proven reserves are figured by many oil geologists at 640 billion bbl., almost a 30-year supply at current consumption rates-but despite the name they are scarcely "proven" in the sense that a proposition in Euclidean geometry is; they are really only estimates based on the best available evidence. To determine proven reserves, geologists study earth strata by drilling for rock and fluid samplings. Often calculations predict probable output by comparing it with production from similar fields...
Because of their imprecise nature, estimates of oil resources tend to gyrate wildly. At first, the oil reservoirs under the British sector of the North Sea were estimated to be 15 billion bbl. Now they are regarded to be at least 33.75 billion bbl.-and the figure is climbing. Proven oil reserves in Mexico and the waters off its coast have been revised from 7 billion bbl. to about 11 billion bbl. Still, the established fields remain the citadels of proven resources (see map): the Middle East (with 368 billion bbl.), followed by the Soviet Union (78 billion bbl.), Africa...
CRUDE OIL. In order to discourage consumption, the cost of U.S.-produced oil to buyers will be raised from its present average of $8.25 per bbl. to the world level-presently $13.50-by 1980. This would be done primarily by taxation rather than by any significant relaxation of federal price controls. The oil companies would be allowed to charge world prices only on newly discovered oil, which in the future could substantially boost their earnings. The cost of oil from existing wells would be driven up by a new federal tax at the wellhead. Thus buyers would pay more...
CONVERTING TO COAL. A 10% tax credit on the cost of new equipment would be granted to factories that switch from oil and natural gas to coal-fired systems. Industrial users of oil who fail to switch will be hit with a 900-per-bbl. penalty tax that will rise to $3 by 1985. Money collected from such levies would be channeled into a development fund for accelerating the conversion of plants to coal. Factories and utilities would be flatly forbidden to burn oil or gas under new boilers unless they could demonstrate that for some special reason they could...