Word: petroleum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...past three years, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has reigned as the world's most successful cartel ever, seemingly able to disregard both world public opinion and market forces. Between late 1973 and 1975, OPEC quintupled global oil prices, helping cause the industrialized world's most severe recession since the 1930s, and managed to make its inflated prices stick even through a worldwide glut of petroleum. Officials in the U.S. and other oil-importing countries kept wishfully thinking that OPEC would somehow split apart, but their hopes were always foiled −until last week. Then...
That it is. Beginning Jan. 1, OPEC oil will be available at two prices: $12.08 a bbl. for Saudi or Emirate crude, $12.70 a bbl. for petroleum from the other OPEC countries. The immediate result will probably be chaos in the world oil trade as the big oil companies and consuming nations jockey to buy at the lowest price. But the Saudi action will at least hold the average world oil price below levels that could have precipitated a new global recession...
...tended to obscure a frightening fact: in the long run, the world is going to run out of oil. Known reserves may well be nearing depletion before the end of the century, sending crude production on an irreversible decline-and before that point is reached, demand pressures will push petroleum prices to confiscatory levels, threatening economic chaos. So current consumption patterns cannot continue indefinitely. The longer governments put off taking rigorous steps to conserve oil and increase the supply of energy from other sources, such as coal and nuclear power, the more devastating the final crunch will...
Long before that ultimate day of reckoning comes, however, the oil-burning nations face an immediate threat. The coming winter may be severe, boosting fuel usage and heating bills. And this week the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the 13-nation supercartel that quintupled world oil prices between October 1973 and September 1975, is expected to push them up another notch, effective Jan. 1. Every percentage point of increase will translate into higher inflation, slower economic growth and fewer jobs around the industrialized world...
Newspapers and petroleum companies are not obvious and natural allies. So it came as a surprise to many Britons last week when the Sunday Observer (circ. 668,000), one of Fleet Street's most literate papers, was purchased by the Atlantic Richfield Co., a $7 billion Los Angeles-based oil giant. The token price: one pound sterling, or about...