Word: bbl
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...weeks ago, crude-oil prices jumped when OPEC moved to keep supplies tight by reducing its output quotas 3.5%, cutting off nearly 1 million bbl. a day from the global market. American consumers are even more vulnerable to energy shocks than they were two decades ago, in part because the U.S. government's policy during that time has failed to produce alternative energy sources. Whipsawed by lobbyists and special interests, taxpayer-supported programs have succeeded mainly in making a few people rich and protecting ineffectual schemes. To be sure, not all energy programs have been a bust. For example...
...nearly two miles across and 250 ft. deep, giant shovels scoop out a petroleum-soaked deposit called oil sand that is beginning a long journey from here into the gas tanks of American cars. The region contains enough of the crude mixture to produce an estimated 175 billion bbl. of oil, eight times the known deposits of conventional crude...
...pumps, the world's largest, push the viscous oil sands through pipes to a plant on-site that converts it to crude oil. From there, it goes by pipeline to refineries in the U.S. The output of the Alberta operations is expected soon to reach 1 million bbl. a day, surpassing U.S. crude production on Alaska's North Slope. The U.S. now imports more oil and petroleum products from Canada than from any other country...
Before you conclude that the moral of this story is that Canada is just lucky to have the stuff, read on. For the U.S. has vast quantities of a similar deposit called oil shale, a claylike rock soaked through with fossil fuel. In fact, at least 1 trillion bbl. of it, or four times Saudi Arabia's oil reserves, is locked up in the mountains 200 miles west of Denver. The U.S. spent billions of dollars to figure out a way to mine the stuff, then gave up and walked away. Why Canada has succeeded at creating a homemade source...
...given rise to high hopes in Washington and the oil industry that shale would develop into a synthetic-fuel industry. To encourage domestic production, Congress enacted the synfuels tax credit and also created the Synthetic Fuels Corp. As envisioned by President Jimmy Carter, synfuels would "replace 2.5 million bbl. of imported oil a day by 1990." Oil companies flocked to Colorado. Those already active in the field, like Union Oil Co. of California (Unocal), redoubled their efforts to bring plants online. Unocal started construction of a mine and processing plant near Parachute, Colo., in 1980 and predicted that it would...