Shipping

Exxon Corp. has been quietly shipping monthly tanker loads of crude oil west of the Channel Islands since October without permission of industry regulators, federal and state officials said Thursday. Environmentalists thought that they had secured a victory in October, 1993, when the oil giant decided to abandon its efforts to ship its Santa Ynez Unit field oil through the ecologically sensitive Santa Barbara Channel.

Under pressure from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the Coast Guard has withdrawn a suggestion to create a five-mile-wide ocean corridor to allow growing numbers of ships to pass safely through oil and gas fields off the California coast earmarked for development. The MMS, the Interior Department agency that leases offshore oil and gas tracts in federal waters, objected that a five-mile-wide corridor would preclude the construction of drilling platforms in potentially rich oil and gas fields and cost the government billions of dollars in lost lease sales.

Athletes all over the world use bats, gloves, shoes and other sports items made by Mizuno Corp. of Japan. Transporting all of those items from Mizuno's factories in the Far East could be quite a chore. Gary Susha, director of logistics for Easton Sports, Mizuno's Burlingame, Calif.-based North American distributor, has found a way to make his job more manageable.

International Business Machines, apparently taking a clear lead over its Japanese competitors in the memory chip race, plans to begin shipments shortly of products equipped with a powerful new generation of semiconductors. The chips can handle 4 million bits of information, four times as much as any existing chip in commercial use. IBM expects to begin shipping products with the 4-megabit chips in a month or shortly thereafter, said company President Jack D. Kuehler in an interview with The Times.

As oil from a ruptured tanker laps at the beaches of Orange County, a final study released Friday supports Chevron Corp.'s argument that it would be cheaper to ship crude oil by tanker from its Point Arguello offshore project than by pipeline or other means. The study, completed by consultants Arthur D. Little Inc. for Santa Barbara County, concludes that it would cost $2.55 to $2.65 a barrel for tankers to carry oil to Los Angeles from the $2-billion project.

The Reagan Administration, keenly embarrassed by Kuwait's seeming preference for Soviet help, still remains ready to protect merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf from Iranian missiles and artillery, State Department and Pentagon officials said Wednesday. "We are holding discussions with the nations bordering on the gulf about the nature of the Iranian threat and how U.S. policy can best be applied to the situation," a State Department official said. But he conceded that the prospect of using U.

An Iranian gunboat raked a Soviet freighter with cannon fire in the Persian Gulf, the first attack on a Soviet vessel since the Iran-Iraq War began 6 1/2 years ago, marine salvage executives reported Friday. The official Soviet news agency Tass branded the attack, which occurred Wednesday morning, as an "act of piracy." Shells hit the crew's quarters and started a small fire, but the crewmen escaped injury, one executive reported.

Los Angeles port officials said Monday that a ship collided with the Vincent Thomas Bridge over the weekend because an onboard crane was left extended -- not because the bridge was too low. They said they were more concerned about the potential for problems as truck traffic on the bridge increases.

Microsoft Corp. may ship half as many Xbox video game consoles as originally promised when the machine launches Nov. 8, according to a video game industry analyst. Microsoft, which has said it will deliver 600,000 to 800,000 Xbox consoles to stores by Nov. 8, refused to comment Thursday. But analyst John G. Taylor of Arcadia Investments in Portland, Ore., said his conclusions were derived from sources at "almost all" major retailers that expect to carry the $299 game machine.

The captain of the cargo ship ordered to relinquish command in Long Beach Harbor early Saturday after the first mate reported him drunk and steering erratically was found to be legally too drunk to captain a ship, according to urine- and blood-alcohol tests released Tuesday by the Coast Guard. Tests taken 5 1/2 hours after Alan Jones, 58, gave up command showed that he had a blood-alcohol level of .07% and a urine-alcohol level of .09%, officials said. The Coast Guard recognizes .