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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (18378)	4/8/1998 11:38:00 AM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 95453

U.S. to delay taking bids to sell SPR oil Wednesday April 8, 10:17 am Eastern Time WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) - U.S. Energy Secretary Federico Pena said Wednesday that the Energy Department will postpone for one month taking bids to sell $207.5 million of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Pena said that three lawmakers have agreed to work with him to try to find a way to rescind the oil sale. ''We want to stop the sale. It is not in the interest of the nation and would be especially hard on marginal producers,'' Pena said at a news conference. The sale was required for this fiscal year in spending bills passed last year to cover operating costs of the oil reserve that the nation keeps as a buffer in case of energy supply emergencies. This fiscal year ends September 30. Since that legislation was passed, oil prices have plummeted, meaning significantly more oil would have to be sold to meet the $207.5 million requirement. ''We have one month's time to come up with the appropriate legislative fix to stop the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,'' Sen. Slade Gorton, a Washington Republican who chairs the Senate Interior Appropriations subcommittee, said in a statement. ''I look forward to working with him and members of Congress to resolve the issue during the upcoming conference on the supplemental,'' Rep. Ralph Regula, an Ohio Republican who chairs the House Interior Appropriations subcommittee, said in a statement. House and Senate representatives will meet to work out differences between the emergency supplemental spending bills the two bodies have passed. The Senate version calls for halting the sale, but the House does not. The issue is more difficult in the House because it requires that an offsetting spending cut or savings be found to replace the oil sale's projected revenue. The SPR, the world's largest stockpile of crude oil, was started 23 years ago and can be made available by the president in a national emergency. The oil is stored in deep underground caverns in salt domes along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana. The oil sale would drop the SPR's current 563 million barrel inventory to less than 550 million barrels, the lowest level since 1987, the Energy Department has said.