Petroleum

Crown Central Petroleum Corp. announced yesterday that it posted its fifth consecutive quarterly loss because of slack demand and low prices.The Baltimore-based gasoline refiner and marketer said it lost $3.3 million, on sales of $455.7 million, in the three months that ended Sept. 30, a slight improvement over last year's third-quarter loss of $3.8 million, on revenue of $475.3 million.The company said profits from its approximately 400 gas stations and convenience stores continued to improve.

W.R. Grace & Co. is expanding one of its joint ventures to provide more products and services to petroleum refiners in places such as the Middle East, the Columbia-based chemical maker announced Wednesday. The joint venture, Advanced Refining Technologies, was created to develop and supply hydroprocessing catalysts to refiners. The venture is a partnership between Grace, Chevron Products Company and Kuwait Catalyst Co. Kuwait Catalyst, which provides these catalysts to the Persian Gulf region, is the largest shareholder.

The dust is flying over Maryland's latest effort to regulate the "recycling" of dirt that has been contaminated by leaking underground fuel tanks.Homeowners who have been fighting new soil-reclamation plants in places such as Baltimore and Kent counties say rules proposed recently for treating oil- and gas-soaked dirt are a good first step. But they say the proposal by the state Department of the Environment doesn't go far enough in protecting their neighborhoods from possible toxic pollution.

Baltimore County lost an appeal of a wrongful contract termination lawsuit brought by a former petroleum vendor in federal court Wednesday, potentially leaving the county on the hook for more than $700,000. The county attorney is reviewing the ruling, said spokeswoman Ellen Kobler. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled against the county in a lawsuit brought by Petroleum Traders Corp. According to the petroleum company, attorneys for the county argued that the contract with the Fort Wayne, Ind.,-based company was invalid because it had not been properly approved by local officials.

Crown Central Petroleum Corp.'s board of directors got more time for its decision in the battle for control of the Baltimore-based refiner. The two parties vying for the company extended their takeover offers, both of which were set to expire at 5 p.m. yesterday, through April 17. Both Rosemore Inc., a Baltimore holding company led by Henry A. Rosenberg Jr., who is also Crown's chairman, president and chief executive officer, and Apex Oil Co. Inc. of...

WASHINGTON - Prices of U.S. imports rose in June, led almost exclusively by a jump in energy costs that is threatening to push up prices for products beyond gasoline and home heating oil. The index of imported prices increased 0.8 percent last month after rising 0.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said yesterday. Excluding petroleum, import prices were unchanged last month after falling 0.2 percent in May. "Petroleum costs are clearly an issue and they're beginning to show up" in other goods, said Joel L. Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors Inc. in Holland, Pa. The Labor Department also said first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose 27,000 to 319,000 in the week ended July 8. While that is the highest in more than a year, the government noted temporary shutdowns as automakers retool assembly plants for the new model year.

No energy policy proposal has caused more acrimony or political gridlock preventing major progress toward energy security than domestic oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf. Liberals and environmentalists who oppose tapping into America's oil reserves in Alaska and offshore invoke the need to protect America's pristine lands and coasts. Republicans - led by Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin - see nature conservation as a lower priority in the face of high gasoline prices and dangerous dependence on oil coming from some of the world's worst regimes.

The revitalization of Baltimore County's eastern waterfront received a boost yesterday when officials began demolishing two dilapidated buildings and announced a plan to identify areas contaminated by petroleum products. County Executive James T. Smith Jr. made the announcement at the demolition of two small vacant buildings that will be replaced by a tiny patch of green space near the headwaters of Middle River. "This is the latest stop in our ongoing road toward revitalization here on the east side," Smith said.

It's time to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Yes, up there, where Alaska bumps into Canada, between the Brooks Range and the Beaufort Sea. The place where caribou and musk ox roam; where grizzly and polar bears hunt, and whales and walrus swim. That's where we should drill for oil, right now. Before you heat up the tar and begin plucking feathers off your neighborhood Canada geese, hear me out. I think we should drill for every last drop of oil we can, because until the last pool of petroleum has been tapped, Americans are not going to get serious about conservation.

Military doctors reported soon after the end of the Persian Gulf War that Marines had been exposed to hazardous hydrocarbons from burning oil wells, according to military documents.Military and civilian doctors also debated the health risks of crude oil during the airwar against Iraq. A report apparently distributed to military personnel on Feb. 22, 1991 -- two days before the ground war began -- described a battlefield rife with environmental hazards and suggested precautions that military personnel could take.

John J. Germenko, founder of a trucking line and petroleum products company, died June 16 of kidney failure at his Ellicott City home. He was 90. Mr. Germenko was born and raised in Cokeburg, Pa., where he graduated from high school. He later moved to Catonsville with his family and enlisted in the Navy in 1942. He served as a paymaster at the Bainbridge Naval training center in Cecil County. After the end of World War II, Mr. Germenko founded Baltimore Tank Lines Inc., a petroleum and chemical trucking company, which served the Middle Atlantic states.

On the evening of July 20, 1969, I was a 10-year-old camper at Camp Conoy in Calvert County, Maryland, now the site of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear energy plant. It was an auspicious night for me and the rest of my cabin-mates; bedtime was usually at 9 p.m., but this night we would be allowed to stay up later and, indeed, watch TV (the only such occasion during my days at summer camp). That evening, we huddled in the wood-frame dining hall and watched on a grainy, 12" black and white TV as Neil Armstrong took those first few steps, 100 of us staring at a now laughably tiny screen.

Two policy announcements last week revealed the Obama administration's core strategy in addressing the nation's growing dependence on oil. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would allow new oil exploration along the Atlantic Coast and in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The following day, the administration announced new mandatory fuel efficiency standards of 35.5 mpg average within six years, up nearly 10 mpg from now. By simultaneously promoting supply-side solutions (drill baby, drill)

"Crude" sounds like the standard "this is an outrage" environmental degradation documentary, the latest in a line that includes "An Inconvenient Truth" and films about the deaths of the oceans, the evaporation of water, the murder of dolphins, even the disintegration of dirt. "Crude" fits that bill, but it is something considerably more interesting as well. The outrage in question is the subject of a class action suit filed by 30,000 residents of Ecuador against Chevron, the world's fifth-largest corporation, alleging that 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater were dumped into the Amazon between 1972 and 1990, fatally poisoning the land and water and sickening inhabitants.

No energy policy proposal has caused more acrimony or political gridlock preventing major progress toward energy security than domestic oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf. Liberals and environmentalists who oppose tapping into America's oil reserves in Alaska and offshore invoke the need to protect America's pristine lands and coasts. Republicans - led by Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin - see nature conservation as a lower priority in the face of high gasoline prices and dangerous dependence on oil coming from some of the world's worst regimes.

Would the gentleman with the property on Joppa Road near the Baltimore Beltway please get back in touch? You called a couple of weeks ago - something about turning your sprawling property back into farmland - and I know people who would be interested in talking to you. You might be, literally, on the edge of an important new trend. It's called "urban edge agriculture," and some in farming believe it's the next big thing. (Note: These are not the same people who predicted that emu ranching would be the next big thing.

Crown Central Petroleum Corp. said yesterday it has hired an investment bank to devise ways to reward its long-suffering shareholders -- with the sale of all or part of the Baltimore oil company as one possibility.The disclosure was included in the company's fourth-quarter and year-end earnings report that marked the seventh time in eight years that it has finished in the red.Crown's rocky financial performance has jolted its stock, sending its Class B shares from nearly $37 in 1989 to $7 yesterday, despite the most powerful bull market in history.

JACOB BLAUSTEIN started a vast oil marketing empire with a horse and a wagon.In 1910, 18-year-old Jacob and his father, Louis, formed the impressive-sounding American Oil Co. and sold kerosene in Baltimore from a horse-drawn tank wagon.American Oil -- now part of the petroleum colossus BP Amoco, formed in 1998 when British Petroleum acquired Amoco -- first operated out of a livery stable on Clark- son and Wells streets. The family horse, Prince, pulled a wagon with a large metal tank.Louis, who fled Lithuania in 1888, sold petroleum products for John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil of New Jersey for 18 years.

George F. Bamford Jr., a World War II veteran and automotive entrepreneur, died of congestive heart failure Dec. 26 at the Berlin Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. The Ocean Pines resident was 86. Born in his family's Dundalk house, Mr. Bamford was raised in Edgemere. He was a 1939 graduate of Sparrows Point High School and went to work as a mechanic's assistant at his father's auto shop, Service Filling Station on North Point Boulevard. He enlisted in the Army in October 1942, seven months before marrying Norma Entwistle in April 1943.

Hardwood dried for six months to a year is recommended as the cleanest-burning fuel for fireplaces. Yet faux logs made with petroleum-based wax have been popular for decades. This season, you'll be able to pile manufactured logs in the cart with a clearer conscience: Duraflame is going greener. Duraflame abandoned all use of increasingly expensive petroleum-based waxes this year. The company sells 100 million logs a year, and its new ones are all made with renewable vegetable-based waxes.