Word: bbl
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...exploiters are pressing ahead anyway, perhaps with less euphoria than in earlier years but with more experience, maturity and confidence. Though only a trickle of oil is being pumped now, oilmen expect crude to flow in ever increasing quantities from an undersea supply estimated at 40 billion bbl., two to four times the recoverable reserves from Alaska's North Slope. Some experts say the total could be 70 billion bbl.-roughly equal to the so-far proven reserves of Kuwait-or even 150 billion bbl...
...Norwegians, already rich in money and energy supplies, North Sea oil means a chance to become richer still as the "blue-eyed Arabs of the North." By the 1980s, Norway could be producing 1.8 million bbl. daily-ten times its domestic needs-and exporting as much oil as Iraq and Libya do now. For the other North Sea participants-Denmark, The Netherlands and West Germany-the waters already promise abundant oil and natural gas. It was in Holland, in fact, that a giant onshore gas discovery in 1959 pointed rightly to further riches under the North...
...storing great quantities of oil at sea was called for. The result: CONDEEP- a giant concrete-reinforced production platform with huge storage tanks. A Norwegian innovation, two CONDEEPs have been put in place in the British sector; each cost $300 million and has a storage capacity of 900,000 bbl. The tow alone, 163 miles to one field and 225 miles to another, cost $2.7 million per unit - the biggest and most expensive tugboat operation in history...
...ironically, it now has a stake in high world oil prices. Britain's North Sea oil is about 15 times more expensive to develop than Middle Eastern crude, so even a dip of a dollar or two in the world oil price, to $11 or $12 per bbl., could render the oil from some fields unprofitable. Says Oil Expert John Lichtblau: "It's no wonder that the industry joke at the moment has Harold Wilson joining Britain to OPEC and asking for a rise in the price...
...supplies it can, fast. Earlier this year, the government said it would set up the British National Oil Corp. to compete with private companies in exploration, production and refining. Presumably, it will move into marginal fields now avoided as uneconomic by private companies. Currently, anything smaller than 100,000-bbl.-per-day production capacity is regarded by most companies as not worth their commercial effort...