Word: bbl
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Those days are gone with perestroika. Like its trade with the former Comecon countries of Eastern Europe, Moscow's deals with Havana are now on a hard- currency basis at prevailing world prices. Under a 1991 agreement worth $3.8 billion, the Soviet Union is to deliver 70 million bbl. of oil to Cuba and, in exchange, receive 4 million tons of sugar, plus citrus fruit, nickel and medical supplies...
Though the bookkeeping is in dollars, the deal is still mainly barter, and prices are adjusted by exchanging different quantities. For example, the Soviets now pay 18 instead of 27 bbl. of oil for a ton of Cuban sugar. Moscow still delivers military and industrial equipment free, but no one is quite sure what it is worth. Western intelligence agencies price it at about $1 billion a year, but as Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister, Jose Raul Viera, once described it, the equipment is "junk no one buys...
...issued what turned out to be exaggerated assessments of oil spills into the gulf, putting Saddam Hussein's acts of ecoterrorism in the worst possible light. Kuwaiti officials appear to be still overstating the amount of oil going up in smoke: the Kuwaitis say they are losing 6 million bbl. per day (roughly equal to 10% of daily global oil use), a figure U.S. experts say is not credible...
...spill off the shores of Kuwait, which was widely reported to be the largest in history -- some 11 million bbl. -- is now estimated to be one- quarter to one-twentieth that size, making it smaller than the 1979-80 Gulf of Mexico spill at the offshore drilling rig known as Ixtoc I. Similarly, Carl Sagan's well-publicized prediction that smoke from the oil fires could rise 5 to 10 km (3 to 6 miles) to the stratosphere and blanket the globe has not yet come to pass. So far, the smoke clouds are hugging the ground, drifting...
...waters of the gulf, the oil spill now estimated by the Saudi government at 0.5 million to 3 million bbl. has been partially contained, but not cleaned up. Although the thickening sludge has killed thousands of seabirds, debilitated the Saudi shrimp industry and threatened plants and coral reefs along the coast of Kuwait and northern Saudi Arabia, favorable winds have so far kept it well north of the rich marine ecosystems in the bay of Bahrain. These marshy flats are the breeding grounds of large numbers of fish and shrimp and the favorite habitat of the rare dugong, the cousin...