Oil Industry

United Airlines increased its fuel surcharge on domestic U.S. flights Friday by as much as $10 round-trip, a move quickly matched by Delta Air Lines Inc. as oil hit a new record again this week. United, the No. 2 U.S. airline, said it increased its domestic U.S. fuel surcharge by $3 to $5 each way. Delta matched United's move, said Rick Seaney, chief executive of fare tracker FareCompare. Delta said earlier in the day that it had not yet raised fares again.

President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday called for a sweeping modernization of Mexico's state-owned oil company, outlining a series of reforms that would allow private firms to assume a greater role in the petroleum industry. "We must act now," Calderon said in a televised address timed to coincide with the formal presentation of his initiative to the Senate. "Time and our oil are running out." The reserves of Pemex, as the oil company is known, could disappear in a decade, officials say.

A surprise decline in U.S. crude supplies pushed oil futures to $112.21 a barrel Wednesday before settling at $110.87, both records that could doom drivers to even higher pump prices. Predictions of $4 gasoline have already come true at a smattering of service stations around California, including a Chevron in downtown Los Angeles where self-serve regular began the day at $4.139 a gallon before rising to $4.199. Wednesday's $2.

Two Ecuadoreans who have waged a 14-year fight to bring a U.S. energy giant to account for what they allege is massive oil contamination in the Amazon are among the winners of an international environmental prize. Pablo Fajardo Mendoza and Luis Yanza each will receive $150,000 today from the San Francisco-based Goldman Environmental Prize for organizing half a dozen indigenous communities to pursue legal action against Texaco and then Chevron Corp. after the two companies merged in 2001.

The Interior Department wants 10 more weeks to decide whether polar bears should be listed as threatened or endangered, a delay that conservation groups condemned as tied to the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in the animal's habitat. On Jan. 9 the department missed a deadline for a final decision and three conservation groups sued. In the government response Thursday, Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty said the department needed until June 30 to complete a legal and policy review.

Chevron, BP and other major oil companies have agreed to pay $423 million to settle more than 500 lawsuits brought by water suppliers and users in California and 19 other states over groundwater contaminated with the gasoline additive MTBE. In California, 11 plaintiffs would receive more than $78 million plus possible reimbursement for future treatment of nearly 1,100 wells, attorneys said.

Only a few weeks ago, prominent policymakers and economists were cheerfully asserting that the U.S. economy would dodge recession and keep chugging forward despite a housing bust, a credit crunch and continuing job losses. "The data are pretty clear that we are not in recession," said President Bush's chief economist, Edward Lazear. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

Every time Sohaila Rezazadeh rings up a sale at her Exxon station in the Oakton section of Fairfax, Va., her cash register sends the information to Exxon Mobil's central computers. If she raises the price of gasoline a couple of pennies, chances are that Exxon will raise the wholesale price she pays by the same amount. Through a password-protected Web portal, Exxon notifies Rezazadeh of wholesale price changes daily. That way the oil giant, which is earning about $3.

Crude oil rocketed more than $10 a barrel Friday to a record high of $138.54, snuffing out motorists' hopes that gasoline prices might ease soon. "It's like every time I look at the prices, they have jumped another 10 cents a gallon," groused James Freedner, 57, of Sun Valley. "I just don't know when this is going to stop." The biggest one-day surge ever in crude prices was fueled by a mix of factors, including a gloomy U.S.

Saudi Arabia plans to increase its oil production by 200,000 barrels a day next month to help tame high fuel prices, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday. The planned output of 9.7 million barrels per day would be an increase of more than 6% since May and would take Saudi crude output to its highest monthly rate since August 1981, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.