Word: petroleum
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...Congress, the OTA analyzed several levels of nuclear exchange. Among them was a classic case of controlled nuclear war: an attack on U.S. oil refineries by ten Soviet SS-18 missiles, each carrying eight warheads of one megaton force. Such an attack would destroy an estimated 64% of U.S. petroleum-refining capacity, along with railways, petrochemical plants, and storage facilities near the refineries...
There are nine promising alternatives. Some have potential everywhere, and others are limited by the constraints of geography, cost or technology. They range from oil shale and tar sands, which have the supreme advantage of providing petroleum itself, to solar power, wind, waves and other exotic forms, which theoretically can provide huge amounts of electricity but no oil. A situation report on each...
Shale. In a 16,000-sq.-mi. area where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming meet, vast deposits of shale hold an estimated 1.8 trillion bbl. of oil, roughly 60 times the nation's proven reserves of liquid petroleum. Shale is a hard rock, light gray to charcoal in color, that contains a solid organic material called kerogen. When heated to temperatures as high as 900° F, it breaks down into oil and gas. The richest shale deposits yield up to 2 bbl. of oil per ton. Not all shale is recoverable, but it could contribute...
...irritation of party leaders like House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who regards him as something of a rebel, Jones last January maneuvered himself onto the powerful Budget Committee. He has since recommended cuts in spending for the Urban Development Bank, the Department of Energy's mismanaged Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the Labor Department's scandal-plagued CETA employment program...
Amid the chaos, the prospects for further disruptions in Iran's exports of petroleum seem dangerously large. Should they occur, Congress would hurriedly have to dust off the mandatory conservation programs that legislators had rejected when it appeared that the U.S. could scrape by without them...