U.S. ships 5.227 million barrels of emergency oil Monday November 20, 2:11 PM EST WASHINGTON, Nov 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department continues to drain oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to boost supplies, shipping 5.227 million barrels of emergency crude over the last week, a department spokesman said on Monday.

A total of 17.837 million barrels of oil has been delivered to energy companies, more than half the 30 million barrels the Clinton administration plans to release from the emergency stockpile to ease tight petroleum supplies.

Last week's shipments were up from 4.84 million barrels during the prior week.

The department appears to be on track to meet its goal of shipping 23 million barrels of the reserve oil by the end of November, and the remaining 7 million barrels in December.

The government is loaning the reserve oil to energy firms, which are supposed to refine the crude into heating oil and other petroleum products to increase supplies this winter.

BP Amoco (BP) has received the most deliveries of reserve oil - 4.951 million barrels.

The other companies that have taken the government oil are Hess Energy Trading (AHC) (3.720 million barrels); Marathon Ashland (MRO) (ASH) (3.690 million barrels); Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (MWD) (1.759 million barrels); Equiva (SHEL) (RD) (TX) (1.975 million barrels); Valero Energy (VLO) (672,000 barrels); Vitol (635,000 barrels) and Elf Trading (ELFP) (435,000 barrels).

Most of the shipped oil has come from the reserve's West Hackberry site in Louisiana, which holds "sweet" crude that is easier for refiners to process because it contains less sulfur.

The companies will return the borrowed oil, plus more barrels as interest, to the emergency stockpile next year.

http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&news_id=reu-n20185216&feed=reu&date=20001120&cat=INDUSTRY

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), November 20, 2000

Answers

Looks like an oil subsidy. Production is at a maximum. Some of these company's balance sheets may look dismal.

-- David Williams (DAVIDWILL@prodigy.net), November 21, 2000.