Oil Industry

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.

A helicopter belonging to Ukraine's state gas company crashed as it tried to land on a Black Sea drilling platform, killing all 20 people aboard, officials said. The Mi-8 helicopter went down about 40 miles offshore, said Valentyn Zemlyansky, a spokesman for the company, Naftogaz. The craft's tail hit a support pole on the rig, and then the copter fell onto the rig and caught fire, the Emergency Situations Ministry said. The passengers were mainly gas company employees headed for the rig.

Re "Empty promises," editorial, April 30 Why on Earth are elected leaders proposing we suspend the federal gas tax to offset rising fuel prices? The tax of about 18.5 cents per gallon is the same today as it was when gas was $1 a gallon. This has been for many years a reasonable way to fund vital road repairs. Has this now become an unreasonable cost for work we no longer need? Just how would this 18.5-cent discount offset what we pay to oil companies? It sounds like another federal subsidy for the oil industry.

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.

The Interior Department said in Juneau that it is moving forward with an oil and gas lease sale covering nearly 4 million acres in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve. The decision includes a plan to set aside more than 600,000 acres of land considered environmentally sensitive. The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska is just west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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.

Re "Exxon's reach is felt at its stations," May 25 The story about how Exxon Mobil sets its wholesale prices and limits the profits of its franchises did make me feel a little bad for the station owners. But it reminded me that the major oil companies are likely violating U.S. antitrust laws. The article points out that major integrated U.S. oil companies "produce crude oil, own refineries and sell gasoline." This sounds very similar to the movie industry in the 1940s, which the U.S. Supreme Court found was breaking antitrust laws.

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.

Pressure from the United States and fears that soaring energy prices are hurting the global economy have forced Saudi Arabia to consider significantly boosting oil production. The Saudis are contemplating a "sizable additional increase" in oil production, according to the Middle East Economic Survey, a weekly newsletter focusing on the region's energy strategies. An announcement on possible measures to bring down the price of oil, which has reached nearly $140 a barrel, is expected this month when King Abdullah meets with oil producers and consumers in the Red Sea city of Jidda.