Word: bbl
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...fact Simon, though reluctant to opt for rationing, seems genuinely to have an open mind on the subject. Right now the government is reassessing the size of the petroleum shortfall the U.S. will undergo this winter. Official projections of a 3.4 million-bbl.-a-day gap in the first three months of 1974 are based on so-called worst-case assumptions. These include a steady climb in demand, a cold winter and a cutback in Canadian oil exports to the U.S. So far, energy experts note, none of these dire fears have actually come true. In addition, gasless Sundays...
Those benefits start, of course, with the fact that the U.S. needs the oil. Economical methods have been developed to get it (estimated cost per bbl.: around $6, or about as much as that of newly found U.S. oil). In each of these, the shale is literally chewed up and cooked. Under heat, the kerogen in the rock yields a heavy oil similar to petroleum crude. As an environmental plus, shale oil contains very little sulfur. At first glance, Interior's program might appear to be too tentative and cautious for an energy-starved nation. Of the Federal Government...
...auctions beginning in January will have to invest $200 million to $250 million just to get the oil out of the rock. Return on that investment will be slow, because construction of mines and refineries will take about five years. The first plants are expected to produce 250,000 bbl. of shale oil a day. That is only 1% of the nation's daily demand for oil-"a teacup," says one oilman. The justification is that if all goes well, the shale-oil industry could be expanded to provide 1 million bbl. a day by 1985, and eventually perhaps...
...chamber inside the oil-bearing rock, inject natural gas into it and then set it afire. The subterranean conflagration would cause the rock to yield its oil, which would then be brought to the surface via special wells. The cost is estimated at slightly more than $1 per bbl. To get the same result another way, Arthur Lewis of the University of California Lawrence Laboratory suggests that the necessary heat come from atomic bombs, which would be exploded in deep layers of rock...
More Austere. The Pentagon does have more capability of increasing supplies than civilian businesses do. Indeed, nearly half the deficiency caused by the Arab embargo can be made up by tapping the naval reserves at Elk Hills. Calif. The field's current output of 5,000 bbl. a day can be boosted to 160,000 bbl. a day in three months if Congress authorizes the increase, as the Energy Emergency Bill passed by the Senate and now before the House would have it do. But the oil-parched military, unable to wait, has invoked an existing...