Word: bbl
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...need more - not fewer - oil traders. After a roller-coaster ride that has sent oil prices from a record high of $147 per bbl. last July to below $35 in December and back to around $60, there has been a clamor to clamp down on speculators - those investors who trade oil but don't ultimately supply it or use it (the way airlines do, for instance). The economic disruption caused by oil's volatility has been so vexing that the Obama Administration believes it can stabilize prices by regulating speculators out of the market...
...last serious disruption in global supplies came 30 years ago, during Iran's revolution, when oil-field workers joined a national strike, effectively taking Iran's 6 million bbl. a day off global oil markets. Back then, Iran's exports accounted for 10% of the world's oil supplies - compared with just 5% today. World oil prices tripled in nine months, from $12.80 a bbl. in September 1978 to $34.40 in June 1979, at the height of the Iran hostage crisis...
...cost of transporting oil would rise sharply. "It is a scenario anyone who looks at security of supplies considers," says David Fyfe, head of the oil-markets division at the International Energy Agency in Paris, which represents oil-consuming industrialized countries. "It would affect up to 12 million bbl. of oil a day." (See highlights from a debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin...
...Obama Administration are considering clamping down on speculation in energy futures, said Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, on Tuesday. Speculation is one factor believed by economists to have contributed to the turmoil in oil prices that saw them hit a high of $147 a bbl. last July and then drop to $33 just six months later. It traded on Tuesday at about $63 a bbl...
...state of Iran's economy. Though it sits on the world's third largest reserves of oil, Iran faces a growing economic crisis. The government is dependent on oil exports for 85% of its revenue, but Iran's aging production capacity is diminishing by about 500,000 bbl. per year, according to some analyses. What oil it can produce, it has little ability to refine, importing as much as 50% of its gasoline. In 2007, Iran imposed gas-rationing, which set off riots...