Fuel

A Texas pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners L.P., announced Monday that it would buy Sunoco Inc. for $5.3 billion, the latest turn in the dramatic transformation of the iconic 126-year-old Philadelphia oil business. Energy Transfer (ETP), based in Dallas, said it would acquire Sunoco for a combination of cash and stock. The Philadelphia retailer of motor fuels and its pipeline affiliate, Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P., will maintain their headquarters in the Philadelphia area, company officials said.

CLEARWATER, Fla. - After nearly six weeks of early mornings and long days, you can start to run out of gas around this time in spring training. Just ask Scott Proefrock. The Phillies assistant general manager literally ran out of gas on I-75 while driving to Port Charlotte on Wednesday for the team's Grapefruit League game against the Tampa Bay Rays. In the car with him were team president David Montgomery; general manager Ruben Amaro Jr.; director of professional scouting Mike Ondo; and Jesse Rendell, the son of former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

If at some point the government requires power plants to capture their emissions of carbon dioxide, a key challenge will be what to do with the stuff. Some have advocated storing the heat-trapping greenhouse gas deep underground. Engineers at Pennsylvania State University have come up with a clever alternative: Turn it back into fuel. They combine the carbon dioxide with water vapor to make methane, the primary component of natural gas, which can be burned in a generator. The concept is not new, but the chemical reaction, which also yields oxygen, requires a lot of energy.

Buckeye Partners L.P., a pipeline carrier of refined petroleum products, has settled a four-year-old battle over challenges by the Air Transport Association of America to increases in Buckeye's rates for transporting aircraft fuel. In 1987, Buckeye, based in Emmaus, Lehigh County, filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for permission to increase its rates by 6 percent, an increase that would have brought it an additional $6 million a year. The air-transport group charged that the request was excessive and was an indication of Buckeye's monopoly power in its market, which includes New York's major airports.

So you want to be a rock and roll star? Forget about what you play, how you look, or who you know. Move to Harrisburg. "If you move to New York," says Fuel's songwriter/guitarist Carl Bell, "you'll totally get lost in the shuffle. But in Harrisburg, you can kind of make your statement and become known - a big-fish-in-a-small-pond kind of principle. " Three years ago, Bell and diaper-days buddy and bassist Jeff Abercrombie decided that their native Kenton, Tenn. (pop. 1,000), while not without its charms, was, in music-business terms, no Harrisburg.

Page 70 of yesterday's Daily News served as a strong morning cup of coffee for the Eagles arriving for work. The page was thumbtacked to the bulletin board just inside the locker-room door, with two key paragraphs of quotations from Detroit's Lomas Brown highlighted in yellow ink. You might have heard that on Wednesday, Brown guaranteed a Lions victory over the Eagles in tomorrow's wild-card playoff game at Veterans Stadium. In case you missed it, here are some of the bold excerpts from the Pro Bowl tackle: "There is no question in my mind that we're going to win this game.

The union representing flight dispatchers disputes allegations by US Airways pilots that they are being pressured to use less fuel than is safe to cut costs. The US Airline Pilots Association paid for a full-page advertisement in USA Today on Wednesday accusing US Airways of "a program of intimidation to pressure your captain to reduce fuel loads. " Now the union that represents 175 flight dispatchers, who plan fuel loads with pilots, say the pilots' union is blowing hot air and trying to scare the flying public.

Nearly 8,000 gallons of airplane fuel spilled from an 18-wheel tractor-trailer that overturned on the Pennsylvania Turnpike yesterday morning near Morgantown, rerouting westbound traffic for six hours. No one was injured in the accident, which involved the truck and two cars behind it, said Cpl. John Rigney of the state police. The fuel, similar to kerosene, is not flammable until it reaches 110 degrees. An undetermined amount of fuel seeped into the soil and two tributaries of the Conestoga Creek, stocked with trout for fishing.

The prospective owner of the Airport Industrial Mall is trying to work out a deal to bring a company that assembles fuel tanker trucks to the mall. A representative of the new owner - a family group operating as AIM Corp. whose principals thus far have remained anonymous - asked the Sadsbury Township supervisors Monday to waive conditions that would require the group to install roads and sewers. Frank LaMarr, the representative, told the supervisors that if the township gave Robert G. Watkins Jr. of East Fallowfield the green light to move his airplane fuel-truck business from Concordville to the mall, the mall's buyer would not ask for other special favors.

Officials suspect that the oil and gasoline leakage from the BP storage facility may have spread to more properties, including an athletic field, and may be larger than first thought. The contamination is the result of 75 years of spills, not leaking pipes or tanks, according to company officials. Borough engineers said at a council meeting last night that a report released by BP last month shows fuel in the groundwater beneath the Mantua Avenue athletic field's parking lot. The field is across the street from BP Oil Inc.'s Mantua Avenue tank farm.

Grenloch Lake in Washington Township, which was contaminated by 26,000 gallons of diesel fuel in January, is set to reopen for fishing on Saturday. More than 9,000 gallons of fuel were pulled from the Gloucester County lake during a four-month cleanup, and additional fuel was removed from the surrounding soil or evaporated, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection said. "There would be some slight residual trace, but as time goes by, that will completely disappear," said spokesman Larry Ragonese.

ATHENS, Greece - Hopes rose slightly Thursday that Greece could end its post-electoral deadlock without having to hold new elections, as international partners warned that Athens must stick to its hugely unpopular austerity program or abandon the euro. Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos, who received the presidential mandate to try and form a government after two other party chiefs failed, said a meeting Thursday with a left-wing potential kingmaker had proved encouraging. If this third mandate fails, President Karolos Papoulias will convene party leaders in a last-ditch effort to get a deal - otherwise new elections will be held in a month.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - The wife of a former aide to John Edwards rebuffed questions Tuesday on whether she had any incentive to lie to hurt the former presidential candidate. "Sir, I'm here to tell the truth about my experiences, about my life," Cheri Young said in response to one of Edwards' defense lawyers. "It was a lie when we accepted paternity for your client, and that is why we are here today. " Her husband, Andrew Young, was among Edwards' closest aides in 2007, when the couple became embroiled in a yearlong effort to cover up the former U.S. senator's extramarital affair and the pregnancy that resulted from it. Both Youngs have testified at Edwards' campaign-finance corruption trial that the candidate asked Andrew Young to issue a statement falsely claiming paternity of the child Edwards fathered with his mistress, Rielle Hunter.

It's going to cost you more to take a taxi in Philadelphia starting today. A $1.25 per trip fuel surcharge went into effect at midnight. The Board of the Philadelphia Parking Authority,which regulates taxis in the city, approved the surcharge at its meeting April 23. The added cost will remain in effect until May 31. The PPD board will determine if the surcharge needs to be extended through June at its monthly meeting set for May...

A Texas pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners L.P., announced Monday that it would buy Sunoco Inc. for $5.3 billion, the latest turn in the dramatic transformation of the iconic 126-year-old Philadelphia oil business. Energy Transfer (ETP), based in Dallas, said it would acquire Sunoco for a combination of cash and stock. The Philadelphia retailer of motor fuels and its pipeline affiliate, Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P., will maintain their headquarters in the Philadelphia area, company officials said.

Delaware gets it, says KR Sridhar, space-engineering professor-turned-Silicon Valley energy missionary, and boss of Bloom Energy (formerly Ion America), which plans to build what he says are efficient electricity-generating fuel cells — a Holy Grail of energy engineering — in Newark, Del., on the rubble of an old Chrysler plant. With state support, of course: $16 million in grants, a new state law that allows Delmarva Power to use fuel cells instead of solar or wind power for green-energy credits, and a consumer surcharge that will boost the cost of electricity to Delaware homeowners by more than $1 a month, for up to 21 years, with the money going to Bloom.

Sam Nevius stole home to pull Deptford even and Lexi Croce followed with the game-winning single, highlighting a two-run seventh-inning rally that lifted the host Spartans over Highland, 6-5, on Thursday in Tri-County Conference softball. In another Tri-County game, Erynn Sobieski pitched a three-hitter in posting her 11th win of the season, with offensive support from Taylor Thomas (2 for 2, 2 RBIs) and Taylor Favinger (3 for 4, 2 runs) ensuring GCIT's 4-1 victory over visiting Cumberland.

NEW ORLEANS - In a real way, because the matchup on Monday once again places Kansas in the path of his team's try for a national championship, the shadow traced by the arc of Mario Chalmers' three-point shot in 2008 still falls across the career of John Calipari. The Kentucky coach claims he never watched the tape of that championship game. He doesn't need to review it to forever see Chalmers shoot that fallaway three with just two seconds left and with Derrick Rose in his face.

THE FUROR over requiring religious institutions and nearly all other organizations to cover contraception in their health plans comes to Philadelphia on Friday. Catholics and pro-life supporters plan to rally at Independence Hall at noon in opposition to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandate. Last month in his online weekly column, Archbishop Charles Chaput called the mandate a "bad law with very dangerous implications. " He said the mandate should be rescinded because it forces some Catholic employers to violate their beliefs.

Yes, of course, presidents have no direct control over gas prices. But Americans know something about this president and his disdain for oil. The "fuel of the past," he contemptuously calls it. To the American worker who doesn't commute by government motorcade and is getting fleeced every week at the pump, oil seems very much a fuel of the present - and the foreseeable future. President Obama incessantly claims energy open-mindedness, insisting that his policy is "all of the above.