Part 5, Chapter 35 Summary

The Second Oil Shock at the end of the 1970s was the greatest boom in history, symbolized by the television program Dallas. Oil companies plowed earnings into new development. Costs climbed out of control up the "oil mountain," towards the cliff. In 1980, Exxon spent a billion dollars on shale oil development, only to see oil prices and demand drop; nothing, it seemed, could make shale oil viable. Virulent inflation provoked a very restrictive monetary policy, which brought on the deepest recession since 1929. Demand for oil dropped substantially in both the industrialized and developing worlds. Egypt, Malaysia, Angola, and China joined the ranks of minor producers/exporters who together had significant volume. A chemical additive nicknamed "slickem" boosted TAPS's flow by 81%; U.S. fields that could not be developed economically at the old prices were put into production in the 1980s. Meanwhile...