Refinery

BAGHDAD -- Seven inmates were killed yesterday when mortar shells slammed into an Iraqi Interior Ministry jail in the capital, Iraqi security officials said. A few miles south, fire broke out at one of Iraq's main oil refineries, a possible case of sabotage. There were conflicting reports about the cause of the blaze, but police said a Katyusha rocket hit a gas tanker. More than 450 attacks have been carried out against Iraq's oil installations or industry employees since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, according to analysts who monitor security issues related to energy.

ROBERT ANDERSON, 90 Oil executive Robert O. Anderson, whose two-decade tenure as chief executive officer of Atlantic Richfield Co. included the discovery of North America's largest oil field, died Sunday at his home in Roswell, N.M., his family said. Mr. Anderson graduated from the University of Chicago in 1939 and went on to work for the American Mineral Spirits Co. He later purchased a small oil refinery in southeastern New Mexico and bought and expanded several other refineries. He served as chief executive officer of Atlantic Richfield for 17 years and was chairman of the board for 21 years.

The familiar yellow and white bags of Domino sugar are once again rolling off the conveyor belts at the Key Highway plant, one week after an explosion blew out windows and rendered the powdered sugar mill a total loss. There is more work to be done, with windows still being boarded up yesterday. But managers picked up mops and workers volunteered overtime to get production lines operating again in advance of the busy holiday baking season. "It was a spectacular effort," refinery manager Stuart FitzGibbon said at a news conference yesterday at the Museum of Industry on Key Highway.

Shattered windows of the Domino Sugar plant looked out over South Baltimore last night after an explosion, so powerful that it shook buildings across the Inner Harbor, forced the refinery's evacuation and closure - possibly for days. Fire officials said the blast did not appear to have done any significant damage to structures at the plant, an integral part of the city skyline for 85 years. The explosion and fires, on the sixth and ninth floors of a building where sugar is refined and packaged, were confined to a dust collection system, officials said.

Oil refineries across America have been troubled by a record number of fires, power failures, leaks, spills and breakdowns this year, causing dozens of them to shut down temporarily or trim production. The disruptions are helping to drive gasoline prices to highs not seen since last summer. These mechanical breakdowns have created a bottleneck in domestic energy supplies, helping to push up gasoline prices 50 cents this year, to well above $3 a gallon. A third of the country's 150 refineries have reported disruptions to their operations since the beginning of the year, a record, according to analysts.

The U.S. House last week approved legislation that would make it a federal crime, complete with prison sentences of up to 10 years, for anybody to sell gasoline at prices that are "unconscionably excessive" or that take "unfair advantage" of consumers in an energy emergency. But if causing fuel to be sold at unnecessarily high prices were a crime, Congress would have no alternative but to throw itself in jail. The legislation is remarkable in that it fails to acknowledge government responsibility for much of the problem of spiking gasoline prices.

WASHINGTON -- With gasoline prices averaging $3.21 for a gallon of regular nationwide over the Memorial Day weekend, traditional economic logic might suggest that this would be a good time to invest in new U.S. oil refineries and increase the supply of gasoline. Yet no new refinery has been built in the United States in three decades, only one is in the works and oil companies are scaling back planned investments in new, expanded or modernized U.S. refineries rather than increasing them.

When the nation's average price of regular gasoline reached a record high in September 2005, the cause was pretty clear: Hurricane Katrina had just ravaged oil refineries. But explaining this week's record of $3.22 per gallon is more complicated because the rise resulted from a combination of factors. They include increased demand, lower inventory, refinery shutdowns in the United States and abroad, and the rising price of crude oil, which has gone from about $50 per barrel at the start of the year to $64.97 per barrel yesterday.

IN THE SENATE Same-sex marriage Senators failed, 49-48, to reach 60 votes for ending a filibuster against a constitutional amendment outlawing samesex marriage. A yes vote backed a measure stating in part: "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman." Estate tax repeal Senators failed, 57-41, to reach 60 votes for ending a filibuster and advancing a Republican bill to permanently repeal the estate tax in 2011. A yes vote backed repeal over arguments that due to exclusions, the tax affects only a minuscule percentage of Americans.

BAGHDAD, Iraq --A fuel crisis in Iraq deepened yesterday when the oil minister was suspended for objecting to steep government-imposed price increases for gasoline and cooking oil. Angry drivers waited in quarter-mile lines at gas stations in Baghdad, brought by fears of more price increases and electricity failures, which have forced them to siphon fuel for use in power generators. There was also concern over problems with refineries, including a shutdown at a major refinery in Baiji, 130 miles north of Baghdad.