Fuel

Caribbean leaders are bracing for a tourism slump and say that a protracted crisis in the Persian Gulf could throw the region into a deep recession.Growth in island tourism peaked in 1987. Since then, the growth rate has declined as the economy of the Northeastern United States, its most important market, slowed and entered what some experts consider a recession.Now the islands face other daunting challenges to their most important industry: rising air fares, which they fear will discourage vacationers, higher fuel bills and shipping costs on imported goods used by hotels and restaurants.

Dave Eck, a Half Moon Bay, Calif., mechanic, had attracted a media spotlight with his fleet of vehicles fueled by used fryer grease from a local chowder house. So when Sacramento called, he figured officials wanted advice on alternative fuels. Not at all. The government rang to notify Eck that he was a tax cheat. He was scolded for failing to get a "diesel fuel supplier's license," reporting quarterly how many gallons of grease he burns and paying a tax on each gallon. "All of a sudden they nailed me for a road tax," said Eck, who drives a Hummer converted to run on vegetable oil. "I said, `Not a problem.

"Fueling the Teen Machine," by Ellen Shanley and Colleen Thompson (Bull, $12.95 softcover, 2001), answers the question: Is there life after french fries? The authors, both dietitians who teach in the nutritional sciences department at the University of Connecticut, make a strong case for eating well during the middle-school and high- school years. The women use the analogy of the right fuel powering a car toward good mileage and a long life to explain the importance of a good diet. Without preaching, and with an understanding of what teen-agers like and want to eat, they outline the basic tenets of nutrition, then offer suggestions specific to the growth needs of teens.

An article in The Sun yesterday about efforts of state agencies to conserve energy and gasoline incorrectly identified the Mass Transit Administration as the Maryland Transportation Authority.State officials throughout Maryland started scrambling yesterday to fill in the details to Gov. William Donald Schaefer's just-announced state energy conservation policy.While some state administrators had already turned down thermostats, many Maryland officials contacted by The Sun yesterday said they hadn't been informed of the governor's directive on Monday that all state operations should reduce energy and gasoline usage by 5 percent.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening's plan to encourage the use of electric cars and other "clean-fuel" vehicles may face a rough road in the legislature.Yesterday, representatives from four major oil companies told the House Ways and Means Committee that the administration's proposal would unfairly subsidize alternative fuels, which they said were no cleaner than reformulated gasolines now on the market.The measure, House Bill 821, would grant an income or franchise tax credit to businesses and utilities that buy cars and trucks powered by electricity, natural gas, propane, methanol and ethanol.

The United States is quietly starting to convert some of its military nuclear stockpiles left over from the Cold War into fuel for civilian nuclear reactors.With little fanfare, the process began June 6 at a plant in Piketon, Ohio, run by U.S. Enrichment Corp., a government-owned company based in Bethesda, Md.The company is turning 13.2 tons of highly enriched uranium into reactor fuel.The amount is a tiny fraction of the nuclear stockpile. But the conversion, begun by the Clinton administration, is meant to encourage other countries, particularly Russia, to engage in similar kinds of disarmament.

NEW YORK -- The diesel fuel came from a Yonkers, N.Y., gas station. The 10-pound bags of plant fertilizer were purchased from a hardware store on Canal Street in New York.Mixed together, these innocuous ingredients -- diesel fuel and fertilizer pellets -- formed an explosive known as AMFO that's so powerful it is used in the mining industry to shatter solid granite.Used by terrorists bent on paralyzing a nation, munitions experts said it could have killed thousands of New Yorkers and destroyed millions of dollars in property.

Declaring that the viability of Maryland is linked to the stabilit of the city, the Greater Baltimore Committee, in a report being released today, is calling for a massive infusion of state and regional aid to fuel a "second renaissance" in Baltimore.The new aid would include $150 million to put the city's much maligned school system on equal financial footing with suburban school systems.The GBC, the city's leading business group, also is recommending changes in the way the state distributes income tax revenues so that jurisdictions like Baltimore with declining tax bases do not lose more revenue.

NEW YORK -- British entrepreneur Richard Branson said yesterday that over the next decade he will invest $3 billion in expected profits from his Virgin airline and train businesses into alternative fuel research to fight global warming. It is one of the biggest contributions ever to a specific social cause, and may be the largest for research into avoiding climate change from a private source, charity experts said. Branson, 56, a billionaire known for his Virgin brand of companies and globe-hopping adventures, made the announcement during the second day of the Clinton Global Initiative, a three-day summit founded by the former president that brings together political, business and nonprofit leaders to combat global ills.

As federal regulations require more and more government-owned vehicles to run on alternative fuel, Maryland corn producers are trying to make sure ethanol isn't left out of the trend.A fleet of 14 Chevrolet Malibu sedans, redesigned by university students to run on ethanol-based fuel, made a pit stop at the Paul Baker Farm in Dickerson, in Montgomery County, yesterday. The cars and students were on their way to a national competition in Washington, and the Maryland Grain Producers Association was on hand to hail their efforts.