Word: petroleum
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...generals and economists. There is nothing altruistic about their concern. Approximately 40% of the oil consumed by the non-Communist world, including nearly a third of the U.S.'s imports, comes from the gulf. Moreover, since the region holds more than 50% of the world's known petroleum reserves, the economies of the West-not to mention of the Third World-will increasingly depend on the security of the wells and tanker lanes of the gulf...
...availability rather than "wildcatting" in new regions. They have found that profits are the same and success more certain with "in fill" wells, which are drilled between existing pumps, or smaller "stripper wells," which produce 10 bbl. or less per day. Explains Charles DiBona, president of the American Petroleum Institute: "A well that might have been abandoned before, because there was not enough oil to make it commercial, now will be completed because of the higher price...
...richest and relatively undeveloped new regions being explored is the Western Overthrust Belt, a geological formation of petroleum- and gas-bearing rock running from Canada to Mexico. Other new drilling in the mainland U.S. is under way in the Tuscaloosa Trend of Louisiana, the Permian Basin of West Texas, the Williston Basin of North and South Dakota and Montana, and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico...
...halcyon days of great American oil discoveries. The output of oil, or an equivalent amount of gas, discovered in new wildcats has declined from more than 350 bbl. per ft. of drilling in the late 1940s to less than 50 bbl. per ft. today. Says John D. Haun, petroleum geologist at the Colorado School of Mines: "We will have to drill many more wildcat wells to come close to finding as much oil as we found in the last decade...
...Mesa Petroleum of Amarillo last year put 55% of its $1.1 billion worth of oil and gas wells into a trust. Wall Street's response was sharp; in less than two months the stock shot up from $40 to $66. Some brokers had hitherto respected Mesa as a well-run company, but felt that it had too many large tracts of older wells. Aggressive investors usually look for small firms with assets concentrated in new drilling fields. By unloading its aging wells, Mesa transformed its image to that of a lean and hungry company oriented toward exploration...