Word: petroleum
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Nimble Shifts. Certainly the U.S. might be expected to bear a disproportionate share of the shortages caused by Arab oil-production cutbacks: the Arab oil states, which once supplied a pivotal 11% of the petroleum burned in America, have placed the U.S. under a total export embargo. Yet The Netherlands is under a similar embargo, and oil companies have switched shipments around nimbly enough to keep that country well supplied. For example, Saudi Arabian oil that usually goes to Dutch refineries has been redirected to Le Havre in France, and non-Arab Iranian oil that normally was shipped to France...
Alan Greenspan, a member of TIME'S Board of Economists and no foe of the oil companies, believes that the key reason has been price. At the end of December, he notes, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decreed a 130% hike in crude prices, sharply increasing the potential value of oil in the holds of tankers at sea. If the oil was unloaded in the U.S., it could be sold only at Government-controlled prices; if it was diverted to Europe or Japan, it could be sold for much more. "There is considerable evidence that there were fairly...
...company chiefs will not concede that they have diverted unusually large amounts of petroleum from the U.S. to Europe or Japan. But a spokesman for Phillips Petroleum last week asserted that several large companies are indeed holding back imports because of the U.S. crude allocation. Most oilmen explain the low level of U.S. imports by making two arguments: they must scrupulously observe the Arab embargo because they operate in the Arab countries only with the sufferance of the host governments, and they cannot scant Europe and Japan by shifting non-Arab oil to the U.S. because that would open...
Federal energy officials late last week announced that 240 million gallons of gasoline will be taken out of refiners' inventories and sent to stations in 25 states. But, says Jerry Cohen, a lawyer for the National Congress of Petroleum Retailers: "The only thing this government seems to react to is pressure." Some station owners have begun to talk about emulating the independent truckers, whose fuel-related strike last month ended with the granting of almost all their demands...
...fact, leaders of the oil-producing nations meeting at Lahore are expected to recommend to next month's session of the O.A.P.E.C. (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) that the ban on exports to the U.S. be lifted...