Word: petroleum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...crude oil trapped in rock below the surface. But the Guadalupe, Calif., oil patch 50 miles northwest of Santa Barbara is no ordinary oilfield. Like a growing number of production sites in California and Texas, Guadalupe is producing a gloppy goo that looks more like asphalt than normal petroleum. This is so-called heavy oil, a once rejected energy source that oilmen now believe may help diminish the nation's dependence on imported petroleum...
...speech and wander through rambling, almost incoherent sentences. Now he raps out short, crisp remarks, sometimes punching at the air like a boxer for emphasis, and spices his delivery with sarcastic wit. Deriding Carter's claims that decontrol of oil prices will spur more domestic exploration for petroleum, he notes that Mobil several years ago used some of its rising profits to buy Montgomery Ward. He asks: "How much oil do you think they'll discover drilling in the aisles of Montgomery Ward department stores...
...adjustment to energy scarcity has been made harsher because markets have not been allowed to operate properly. Only for a brief time during the 1930s were petroleum prices set entirely by supply and demand. The cost of oil: an astonishingly low 100 per bbl. Prodded by the major oil producers, the Texas Railroad Commission began controlling output, thus pumping up the price...
Typical of the new trend was Kuwait's announcement two weeks ago that it is cutting the amount of crude sold to British Petroleum from 450,000 bbl. per day to 150,000 bbl. Earlier, Kuwait had agreed to increase sales to the two largely state-owned French oil companies by 85,000 bbl. daily. Said Kuwait's Oil Minister Ali Khalifa Al Sabah after the decision: "If the oil companies don't like it, they may buy their oil elsewhere...
Though oil companies are the world's favorite whipping boys, some energy and foreign policy experts worry about the implications of cutting them out of the petroleum business and having most trade done on a government-to-government basis. Such deals give the producers enormous potential clout over consuming nations. Explains a top energy official in Washington: "A small refiner, or even a small country, could find itself reliant on a single country for perhaps as much as half its oil deliveries. But the amount might equal no more than a tiny fraction of the producing nation...