Oil

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

Retail gasoline prices fell in California and across much of the nation over the last week, while crude oil recovered a little of the previous weeks' losses. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline in California fell 3.1 cents to $4.336 a gallon, according to the Energy Department's weekly survey of fuel prices, released Monday. That followed two weeks of increases totaling 28.1 cents a gallon. Last year at this time, a gallon of regular gasoline in California was 12.1 cents cheaper.

Laboratory tests show that oil washing up on Northern California beaches did not come from the cargo ship that slammed into the Bay Bridge last fall. Investigators say tar balls found this week from Pacifica to Monterey probably came from naturally occurring pools of oil beneath the sea floor. California Department of Fish and Game Lt. Brian Arnold said heavy storms were typically responsible for washing oil ashore during the winter. The Cosco Busan leaked 58,000 gallons of toxic bunker fuel into San Francisco Bay after hitting a bridge support in November.

SACRAMENTO — Nearly a year after a Kern County oil worker was sucked underground and boiled to death, state authorities have turned to the two leading oil companies involved in the incident to investigate it. On Monday, the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources released a report outlining the circumstances of the worker's death, and subsequent oil spills and eruptions, in a field where Chevron and another operator were using steam extraction....

OIL: As oil prices continue to slump, major U.S. oil firms likely will revise capital spending plans downward, with the oil hunt focused overseas. Independent producers will struggle to afford domestic oil exploration. Consumers will benefit from lower prices.

Some good buys for your health and your pocketbook: Buy fresh fruits and vegetables in season. Buy frozen otherwise. Frozen is cheaper and may even be better for you than fresh. That's because produce is usually frozen at its ripest, which is usually when it maxes out in nutrient content too. Some nutrients do break down or leach out in the freezing process, but most make it through.

So how many omega-3 fatty acids are enough — and how should you get them? That likely depends on your age and your specific health concerns. The United States does not yet have guidelines for DHA or EPA, and consensus among nutrition experts is elusive. But specialty groups, some governmental agencies and individual experts have started to take a stand. For healthy adults without major medical issues, the European Food Safety Agency recommends a daily dose of 250 milligrams of combined EPA and DHA, while the National Heart Foundation of Australia suggests 500 milligrams.

Many automobile owners are spending more than they need on motor oil, believing that it should be changed every 3,000 miles even though almost no manufacturer requires such an aggressive oil-change schedule. The long-held notion that the oil should be changed every 3,000 miles is so prevalent that California officials have launched a campaign to stop drivers from wasting millions of gallons of oil annually because they have their vehicles serviced too often. "Our survey data found that nearly half of California drivers are still changing their oil at 3,000 miles or even sooner," said Mark Oldfield, a spokesman for the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery, which has launched the Check Your Number campaign to encourage drivers to go with the manufacturer's recommendations.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

It's too bad that moisturizing the skin isn't as easy as watering a plant. If you could fix dry skin just by pouring on water, we'd all spend more time in the shower and less time searching for a skin moisturizer that really works. To stay moist, the skin needs more than water. It contains special fats — ceramides are one example — that help lock in the water and keep the body surface supple and soft. Skin cells make these fats on their own, but they don't always make enough to prevent dryness.

LAFAYETTE, La. - Visitors to this oil town might be forgiven for wondering whether the BP oil spill and subsequent drilling moratorium ever happened. "Now hiring" signs are plastered on billboards around town, and hotels such as the Crowne Plaza are chock full of seminars training students to work on offshore rigs. Many offshore companies can't find enough workers for the jobs they're listing. This parish has the lowest unemployment rate in Louisiana, 4.8%. Such is the opportunity on the offshore rigs that Sheila Clark, whose husband, Donald, died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago, said her 22-year-old son recently asked her how she'd feel if he went to work on a rig. "I can't stop him," said Clark, who moved to Baton Rouge after her husband's death.

KHARTOUM, Sudan - It has come to this: The Sudanese government is sending out text messages to the population begging for donations to help the cash-strapped military. "Please help support the army," the messages plead. "If you want to contribute 10 Sudanese pounds, send number 10, and if you want to contribute 50 pounds, send the number 50. " This would not appear to an optimum moment to get into a war with its newest neighbor, South Sudan. But pride on both sides of their disputed border is undermining hope of peace, analysts warn, with neither side willing to reach a deal on the oil both depend on. South Sudan independence in July has cost Sudan three-quarters of its oil revenue, paralyzing the nation's economy.

With energy prices high, Big Oil rules atop the Fortune 500, helping to put Texas just a hair behind California as home to the highest-revenue corporations -- 52 firms, compared with the Golden State's 53. The magazine's latest list of mega-enterprises, released Monday, showed Exxon Mobil in the Dallas suburb of Irving edging out Wal-Mart Stores for the top spot, with 2011 revenue of $453 billion, compared with $447 billion at the Arkansas-based...

SACRAMENTO — Under pressure from state lawmakers and environmentalists, Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has agreed to write regulations for one controversial oil extraction method and reexamine rules for another that led to a worker's death last year. The administration is seeking money in the next state budget to regulate the booming oil industry and assuage public concern over hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking. " Officials plan to develop rules that would ensure the integrity of oil wells and establish reporting requirements for operators that inject chemical-laced water and sand deep into the ground to tap oil, according to a California Department of Conservation document released this week.

WASHINGTON - The nation's long, hard ride to recovery went off track in the spring: Job growth slowed for the second straight month, raising fresh fears about the underlying strength of the economy. In a disappointing development for President Obama's reelection campaign, employers added a modest 115,000 jobs in April, barely enough to keep up with the natural growth of the workforce. The unemployment rate inched down to 8.1% - not because more people got jobs but because more discouraged workers dropped out of the labor market.

Total time: 25 minutes, plus cooling time Servings: This makes about 1½ cups chile oil Note: Adapted from "China Moon Cookbook" by Barbara Tropp. 1/3 cup dried red chile flakes 3 tablespoons fermented black beans, unrinsed and coarsely chopped 2 large cloves garlic, slightly crushed 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger 1 1/4 cups canola oil 3 tablespoons sesame oil 1. In a small saucepan, combine the chile flakes, fermented black beans, garlic, ginger, canola and sesame oils.

St. Petersburg, Fla. — Scientists have found evidence that oil has become toxic to marine organisms in a section of the Gulf of Mexico that supports the spawning grounds of commercially important fish species. Researchers from the University of South Florida said Tuesday that, in preliminary results, there appear to be droplets of oil among the sediments of a vital underwater canyon where clouds of oil from the BP spill were found. "So, indeed, the waters have a level of toxicity that needs to be recognized, and I think these were some of the first indicators that the base of the food web — the bacteria and the phytoplankton — may be affected," said David Hollander, chief scientist on a research vessel that just returned from a 10-day trip in the gulf.

SACRAMENTO –The Brown administration is scrambling to convince an increasingly wary public that state regulators are getting a handle on hydraulic fracturing, a controversial oil extraction method that can pose a hazard to drinking water. State environmental officials last week requested that energy companies disclose where they conduct "fracking" operations and what chemicals they inject into the ground to tap oil deposits. They also were considering whether to launch an independent study to assess effects of the practice.

Chevron Corp. said first-quarter profit rose 4.2% as rising oil prices offset falling natural gas prices. Net income for the first three months of the year increased to $6.47 billion, or $3.27 a share, from $6.21 billion, or $3.09,a year earlier, the San Ramon, Calif., company reported Friday. Revenue for the world's third-largest publicly traded oil company rose to $60.71 billion, compared with $60.34 billion in the first quarter last year. The company's financial performance was hurt by a sharp year-to-year decline in natural gas prices, but that drop was more than offset by sharply higher oil prices.

The American public is divided about whether to eliminate federal subsidies for any form of energy and is giving less support to nuclear power and U.S. funding of renewable energy, a new poll has found. Fifty-four percent of respondents opposed doing away with subsidies for oil, gas, coal, nuclear or renewable energy, while 47% favored the idea. Support for building more nuclear power plants has fallen dramatically, to 42% from 61% in 2008. The Yale-George Mason University poll being released Thursday found that 76% of Americans support regulating carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas pollutant and that two-thirds believe the U.S. should pursue policies to reduce its carbon footprint.