Conoco

Du Pont Co., the Wilmington chemical and energy producer, said yesterday that improved profits from its Conoco oil operations helped to cushion falling profits from its other businesses. Total profits were down 4 percent in the quarter, when the recession cut demand for a number of Du Pont's products, including carpet fibers, coal, polymers and electronic and imaging systems. However, after-tax profits from Conoco were up 63 percent from the first quarter of 1990, thanks to strong profit margins on the refining of crude oil and improved sales of oil and natural gas. Du Pont said its chemical operations were hurt by the costs of the partial end to Freon production in the United States and by the costs of developing alternatives to Freon and other chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)

Officials of two oil companies with ties to Pennsylvania and this region said yesterday they are ready and willing to comply with an anticipated U.S. government order to close their operations in Libya. But spokesmen for Conoco, a subsidiary of Wilmington-based DuPont Chemical, and Marathon, which is owned by Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, said they have not received official word from the federal government ordering them to leave Libya, despite press reports that they must leave by June 30. "We are monitoring the situation closely and we are willing to comply with whatever the law says,"explained Marathon spokesman Bill Ryder.

The Du Pont Co. reported yesterday that net income for the third quarter surged 25 percent, but the improvement was entirely the result of nonrecurring items. Without the one-time adjustments, earnings for the giant chemical and energy firm would have fallen 7 percent as a result of the steep slide in oil and gas prices during the last year. For the period, Du Pont's income totaled $343 million or $1.42 per share. In the third quarter last year, the company earned $275 million or $1.13 per share.

President Reagan's order that all U.S. companies and citizens quit doing business with Libya will affect only a modest amount of trade with that country because it already is the object of a tough economic embargo imposed in 1981. Major companies that do business with Libya are the Amerada Hess, Occidental, Marathon, Conoco and Chevron oil companies, and Brown and Root, a construction firm. Occidental, Marathon and Conoco issued statements last night saying they would comply with the President's order.

The Du Pont Co. plans to eliminate up to 2,000 white-collar jobs over the next two years, asking for volunteers first but firing managers or other professionals if necessary. The reduction is an extension of the effort to cut the work force at the Wilmington-based company, an effort that began last year and that resulted in 11,200 voluntary early retirements. In 1982, a year after Du Pont bought Conoco Inc., the combined companies had 141,000 employees; the total is now about 110,000, company officials said yesterday.

The good news for the environment is that capitalism has finally discovered conservation can be profitable. The three biggest U.S. tuna canners have stopped buying tuna caught in dolphin-killing nets. A major oil company is purchasing double-hulled tankers to reduce the risk of oil spills. And the nation's best-known fast food chain will spend $100 million a year on recycled products in remodeling its restaurants. The enlightened decisions by H.J. Heinz Company, Conoco and McDonald's were not acts of altruism.

There was Greenpeace, with its propane-fueled, ozone-friendly refrigerator parked across the street. There were critics of toxic emissions and of generous executive pay. Interspersed with these were calls for political nonpartisanship, compensation for Florida farmers and better contracts for union employees. These and other diverse interests came together yesterday at the annual shareholders meeting of the DuPont Co., in a year when the huge company is redefining itself as lean and efficient in response to harsh economic conditions.

In the near-daylong darkness, shielded from the cutting Arctic cold inside insulated sheds, 20 oil wells began sucking crude this winter from deep beneath the snowy tundra, sending it surging down a spur of the silvery Trans Alaska Pipeline. The oil was the first to flow from a new, high-risk field Conoco Inc. is developing at a price of $300 million here on the lip of icy Prudhoe Bay. The field, because of its high cost, remoteness and relatively small size, depends on stable or rising oil prices to pay dividends.

DuPont Co. shares fell sharply yesterday after the Wilmington-based company said it anticipates a 10 to 15 percent decline in second-quarter earnings. The company's stock price fell $7 a share to close at $70.13 as 11.1 million shares were traded, more than four times the average daily volume. The drop by DuPont, one of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, accounted for 28.6 points of the blue-chip average's decline of 85.19 points to 9,089.78 yesterday. Last year, DuPont's second-quarter earnings were 99 cents a share, and analysts expected the company to earn $1.01 a share in the second quarter of this year.

About four years ago, Du Pont Co., normally one of the most cautious and deliberate of American corporations, stunned Wall Street by leaping headlong into a fierce three-way fight for Conoco Inc., the Stamford, Conn., oil company. Du Pont, of course, was victorious. It bested rivals Mobil Corp. and Seagram Co. Ltd. with a staggering bid of $7.7 billion and absorbed Conoco in what was, at the time, the largest corporate merger ever. But Du Pont paid another price as well. When the smoke had cleared, Seagram, the Canadian-based liquor distiller, was left holding 20 percent of Du Pont's common stock.

IN THE REGION Urban: Controversial shirt never stocked Urban Outfitters Inc. said it never stocked or sold a controversial T-shirt with a pocket patch that critics said resembled a symbol worn by Jews in Nazi Europe, while the shirt's Danish manufacturer, Wood Wood, said a photo featuring the embroidery on Urban's website "must be an early sample" of a prototype that was never, ultimately, made. The Philadelphia-based retailer would not explain how a photo of the yellow cotton Kellog tee with a six-pointed blue star on a chest pocket ended up on its website for $100.

ConocoPhillips said it would extend efforts to sell its Trainer oil refinery because of "recent interest" from potential buyers. "We are continuing efforts to seek a buyer," the Houston company said in an e-mail. Extending the sales deadline from March 31 to the end of May will "allow more time for discussions to take place. " ConocoPhillips shut the 190,000-barrel-per-day refinery in the Delaware County community last year and laid off about 400 employees there as of Jan. 31. In January, ConocoPhillips said it intended to "permanently shut down" the Trainer refinery if it had not identified a buyer by the end of March.

Citing reports of improved refinery margins, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D., Pa.) has asked the owners of three Delaware River refineries to reveal their economic analyses that led to their decisions to sell or close the plants. "Many of my constituents question your claims about the lack of revenue ability associated with these refineries," Casey wrote Wednesday in letters to Sunoco Inc. chief executive Lynn Elsenhans and ConocoPhillips CEO James J. Mulva. Casey urged the executives to "publicly disclose all relevant information so the public can make a full accounting.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey on Tuesday urged ConocoPhillips to more clearly lay out plans for its idled Trainer refinery, which the company says it will permanently shut down if a buyer is not found on March 31. The Pennsylvania Democrat, responding to labor union reports that ConocoPhillips plans to demolish the refinery if it is unsold, asked ConocoPhillips chief executive James J. Mulva in a letter to "clearly articulate your current plans for the...

ConocoPhillips says no decision has been made about demolishing its refinery in Trainer if the company cannot immediately find a buyer. Denis Stephano, president of United Steelworkers Local 10-234, which represents more than 200 workers at the idled Delaware County refinery, said Tuesday that the refinery's owner told labor leaders Thursday the company would demolish the plant if it is not sold by March 31. "This is the first time the company...

TO QUOTE your misleading editorial: "But no one yet has shown real evidence that regulations cause a net loss of jobs or harm the economy. " You didn't look hard enough. Right here in our back yard a hodgepodge of regulations are threatening 20,000 jobs. I speak of the announced shutdown of the Sunoco and Conoco refineries in Trainer and Marcus Hook. According to Gene Barr, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, in Harrisburg, and a former employee of the Conoco refinery: "The myriad of regulations dictating the composition of gasoline, diesel and other products along with other requirements on emissions has forced the industry to spend massive sums of money to comply.

In a corner of Delaware County still reeling from Sunoco's decision to sell or close its local refinery, Tuesday's announcement by another major employer, ConocoPhillips, to do the same felt like a death blow. At the Marcus Hook Trainer Fire Company, all eyes were glued to a television waiting for the news reports on ConocoPhillips' plan to immediately begin shutting down its operation at its Trainer facility. The refinery will permanently close if a buyer is not found in the next six months.

By next summer, Philadelphia could switch from being the center of the East Coast's oil-refining industry to a historical footnote. ConocoPhillips' announcement Tuesday that it plans to sell or shut down its Trainer, Delaware County, refinery was expected, especially after Sunoco Inc. announced a similar decision three weeks earlier. But that does not lessen the impact of the potential loss of 410 jobs at the 91-year-old refinery that ConocoPhillips has owned since 2002, when Conoco Inc. acquired Phillips Petroleum Co. The shutdown has already begun.