Oil Fields

Iraq said it sent dozens of planes to raid Iranian oil fields and factories today hours after it reported hitting a large vessel off Iran in the northern Persian Gulf. A communique said the planes caused heavy damage to two oil fields in southwest Iran and to two factories producing military equipment near the city of Esfahan. The Iranian news agency IRNA said some workers were killed or wounded in Iraqi attacks on factories at Esfahan and at Aghajari in the border province of Khuzistan.

At the oil collection point here known as Gathering Center 14, evidence of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's notorious scorched-earth tactics is on display. Once-huge metal oil-storage tanks lie in their original locations, flattened like pancakes. Melted and twisted pipes are strewn across charred, lava-like soil. Hardly anything sprouts in the cracks of buckled concrete. Down the road, a lake previously vibrant with birds has become a stagnant pool of desolation. Twelve years after Kuwait was liberated, Gathering Center 14 still bears scars from the devastation inflicted by the invading Iraqi army that wired it with explosives before retreating.

On Nov. 27, he was called to active duty. On Jan. 2, his unit flew to the Persian Gulf. On April 10, he was back at Camp Lejeune. April 14 was homecoming in Reading. It was a fast war. For 21-year-old Dean Galanis and other reservists who served in the Persian Gulf, it is over and they are home - safe, sound and sobered by their brush with modern warfare. Galanis, an aspiring director, was pursuing a film degree at Temple when he was called up. He got home in time for the annual Spring Fling rock concert and campus block party, with a brand new videocamera on his shoulder.

Plains Exploration & Production Co. agreed to buy BP P.L.C.'s and Royal Dutch Shell P.L.C.'s stakes in a group of Gulf of Mexico oil fields for $6.1 billion, doubling crude production in its biggest acquisition since 2007. BP, which has been selling assets after causing the worst marine oil spill in U.S. history, sold its fields for $5.55 billion. Shell sold its stake in a field co-owned with BP for $560 million, according to a statement. The acquisition amount is larger than Houston-based Plains' market value.

Iraq tightened its grip on Kuwait's capital yesterday and sent its armored columns south toward Kuwait's richest oil fields, warning that any attempts to thwart its invasion would leave a "graveyard" in the tiny Persian Gulf country. Although heavily outnumbered Kuwaiti forces continued to mount sporadic defenses during the late afternoon, Western diplomats said Iraq had taken substantial control of the country. The Iraqis began their invasion early yesterday morning, sending an estimated 350 tanks and 60,000 troops across the border, capturing most of the country within hours.

The decline in U.S. oil production may be slowing as producers squeeze a few more drops out of domestic wells. But the cold, hard geological reality, analysts said last week, is that the long-term slide in U.S. production will not be reversed. Oil output in the United States in the six weeks after Iraq's Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait was 2 percent below production in the same period last year. But that represented improvement from the overall decline this year of 4.8 percent. U.S. Energy Department estimates put U.S. output at 6.98 million barrels a day in the week ended Sept.

The numerous and widely dispersed oil fields in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf are extraordinarily vulnerable to Iraqi saboteurs, experts said yesterday. Moreover, if more than a dozen targets were hit at once, the world's very limited oil industry firefighting resources would be overwhelmed. "Just trying to get one of them (oil well fires) out is a terrible problem," said John Collins of the Congressional Research Service, author of the authoritative study "Oil Fields as Military Objectives.

When Melvin N. Miller began investigating new uses of magnetic resonance imaging in the early 1980s, he was looking for a better understanding of what goes on inside the human body. Instead, he found that the oil industry needed a better understanding of what goes on in the sand and clay hidden thousands of feet beneath the earth's surface. That idea turned into a gold mine. In 1983, Miller founded Numar Corp., in Malvern, to develop and produce magnetic-resonance-imaging instruments for use in oil exploration.

CSX on Monday announced a $26 million track capacity expansion on its River Line between Albany N.Y. and northern New Jersey, enabling the railroad operator to handle more trains moving crude oil to East Coast refineries. Demand for crude oil in New Jersey and the Philadelphia area "may be as much as five trains per day, or over 400,000 barrels, over the next couple of years," Oscar Munoz, executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in a statement. Much of the crude being produced in emergent Midwestern oil fields must move to markets by rail rather than pipeline.

SO HALLIBURTON is moving from Houston to Dubai, where they get their real money. This shouldn't surprise us, since their allegiance is to the almighty petro-dollar and not to us, the American people. In the 1990s, when Vice President Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the firm had the job of repairing Iraq's oil fields while Saddam Hussein was still in power. And these are the people running our government. Who are they really working for? John Oliver Mason Philadelphia

CSX on Monday announced a $26 million track capacity expansion on its River Line between Albany N.Y. and northern New Jersey, enabling the railroad operator to handle more trains moving crude oil to East Coast refineries. Demand for crude oil in New Jersey and the Philadelphia area "may be as much as five trains per day, or over 400,000 barrels, over the next couple of years," Oscar Munoz, executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in a statement. Much of the crude being produced in emergent Midwestern oil fields must move to markets by rail rather than pipeline.

Plains Exploration & Production Co. agreed to buy BP P.L.C.'s and Royal Dutch Shell P.L.C.'s stakes in a group of Gulf of Mexico oil fields for $6.1 billion, doubling crude production in its biggest acquisition since 2007. BP, which has been selling assets after causing the worst marine oil spill in U.S. history, sold its fields for $5.55 billion. Shell sold its stake in a field co-owned with BP for $560 million, according to a statement. The acquisition amount is larger than Houston-based Plains' market value.

Oil drilling starts off Alaskan coast SEATTLE - A potential new energy frontier opened early Sunday in the U.S. Arctic as Royal Dutch Shell plumbed a drill bit into the bed of the Chukchi Sea, 70 miles off the coast of northwest Alaska. The oil company, which spent six years and $4.5 billion trying to launch America's first offshore oil production in the Arctic, announced that its Noble Discoverer had anchored northwest of Alaska's North Slope and begun drilling the "top hole" of an exploration well.

THE DAILY NEWS can't move to Strawbridge's until I tell one last story:   In a burst of naïve tabloid entrepreneurialism typical of the Daily News, we once decided to create a 9-Star edition with the goal of catching home-bound commuters with the very latest afternoon news. Fair enough, right? Quaint, as we look back. But to promote the 9-Star, we decided to do our own sequel of King Kong by tying a 40-foot inflatable gorilla to the tower at 400 N. Broad with a Daily News delivery bag stitched to its considerable midsection.

BILLINGS, Mont. - A West Virginia man who claimed to be a victim of a drive-by shooting along a rural Montana highway while working on a memoir called "Kindness in America" has confessed to shooting himself, authorities said Friday. Ray Dolin, 39, of Julian, W. Va., made the acknowledgment Thursday night, said Valley County Sheriff Glen Meier. The case remains under investigation and charges are possible, though none have been filed. Dolin claimed he was hitchhiking along U.S. Highway 2 west of Glasgow on Saturday when the driver of a maroon pickup pulled over and shot him in the arm. Authorities later arrested Lloyd Christopher Danielson 3d, 52, and charged him with felony assault.

DAMN! The Donald will not run for president, depriving us pundits of the one starter in the GOP rotation that all of us could hit for distance. I blame Barack Obama for this. If he had held out for a few more weeks before releasing his birth certificate, we could have ridden this sucker at least into late summer. Trump had dispatched a squad of researchers to Hawaii with the promise that their findings "would surprise the public. " He had demanded that the president release his academic records from law school.

Not much change in the cost of regular no-lead gas in the five-county Philadelphia area, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic. The average remained at $3.56 Friday, although that's 9 cents more than last Friday. South Jersey's average was up 1 cent overnight, to $3.37, the auto club reported. That's also 9 cents more than a week ago. The U.S. average was $3.54, up 1 cent overnight and 7 cents since last Friday. Meanwhile, oil prices continued to slide, dropping below $100 per barrel for the first time in more than a week, after a massive earthquake spawned a tsunami that slammed into northern Japan.

CLEARFIELD, PA. - The contractor whose Pennsylvania operations were suspended by state environmental officials after a natural gas well blowout said Thursday that it had already idled its two Marcellus Shale rigs and is cooperating with the investigation. Forbes Energy Services Ltd., of Alice, Texas, said it had "voluntarily and proactively" shut down its Marcellus rigs following the June 3 accident in Clearfield County, in which a well erupted and spewed natural gas and toxic fluids for 16 hours before it was brought under control.

SO HALLIBURTON is moving from Houston to Dubai, where they get their real money. This shouldn't surprise us, since their allegiance is to the almighty petro-dollar and not to us, the American people. In the 1990s, when Vice President Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the firm had the job of repairing Iraq's oil fields while Saddam Hussein was still in power. And these are the people running our government. Who are they really working for? John Oliver Mason Philadelphia

The thin glass tube was held upright with a clamp, but the thick, dark oil inside didn't budge - much like ketchup stuck in an overturned bottle. No problem. Rongjia Tao brushed the outside of the tube a few times with a small magnet, and the oil began to flow slowly downward. Tao, a physics professor at Temple University, wants to take his technique from glass tubes to pipelines, improving the flow of tarlike crude oil in oil fields worldwide - especially in cold, deepwater environments where it takes more energy to pump the thick stuff.