Word: bbl
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...East are cut off. Though Baghdad Radio announced that the new regime will honor existing agreements with Western oil companies, and oil continued to flow (see FOREIGN NEWS), few oilmen were willing to relax. From beneath the burning deserts of the Middle East flow more than 4,000,000 bbl. of oil a day, a quarter of the free world's production. About 90% of the oil is exported, and 58% goes to Western Europe. Western oil companies have more than $3 billion in plant and equipment invested in the Middle East, 47% of it owned by U.S. firms...
Other Wells to Draw On. If Iraqi oil were cut off, the world market would hardly know the difference. Iraq now produces 704,000 bbl. per day, only 17% of total Mid-East production and less than 5% of the world's total; the U.S. pumps more than nine times that much. Iraq provides only between 9% and 10% of Great Britain's total oil requirements, though it does ship about 34% of France's current supply. Any cutoff of its oil could easily be made up by cracking the taps a fraction wider in other Mideast...
...which gets only 200,000 bbl. daily from the Middle East, few oilmen would propose a dramatic increase in domestic production to offset loss of the Iraq supply. They are wary of repeating their mistake during the Suez crisis, when they amassed stores of oil so large that production had to be chopped back hard this year. Last week the Texas Railroad Commission boosted the number of producing days in August from nine to eleven, but made it clear that the hike was due to a slight rise in petroleum demand and a reduction of oil inventories rather than...
...Eisenhower Administration is prepared to reactivate the emergency supply system that functioned so well at the time of Suez. If it wanted to do so, the U.S. could probably increase its current production of 6,475,000 bbl. a day by at least 45%. One problem would be deploying the world's tanker fleets to best advantage as rapidly as possible. For this reason, long-depressed U.S. tanker rates rose 15% to 20% last week...
...Reluctant Drillers. The first real oil find came in 1954. Shell Oil brought in a 1,170-bbl.-daily well at Desert Creek in nearby Utah. But the biggest discovery came in 1956. The Texas Co. tried to get other companies to come in on a deal to drill in the Aneth section of southeastern Utah, where the lease was about to expire, found no takers, and finally went reluctantly ahead itself. Result: it bored smack into the Aneth pool with estimated reserves of 300 million bbls., the biggest find since the Williston Basin seven years...