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Article: Location, location, location: No shortage of oil reserves, but most are found in the volatile Middle East.(World)(Briefing/Middle East)(News Analysis)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- September 18, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Both the optimists and the pessimists were right.
During the Arab oil boycott after the 1973 Middle East war, when the price of crude oil more than quadrupled on the world market, optimistic oil industry experts argued that claims the world was running out of oil were wildly premature.
They were convinced far vaster reserves were still just waiting to be discovered.
They were right. Known world oil reserves have doubled in the past 20 years, and new technologies have emerged to extract them at competitive costs.
But the pessimists were right, too.
Although known crude oil reserves have soared from around 500 billion ...