biz.yahoo.com Friday March 21, 4:58 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices deepened a week-long plunge on Friday to hit four-month lows as U.S. and British forces secured key Iraqi oilfields and ports, calming market fears of widespread destruction by Iraqi troops.

The value of oil has dropped by 30 percent in a week, having peaked at nearly $40 last month. A big wave of extra OPEC (News - Websites) oil arriving in the West, replacing supply lost from war-torn Iraq, also helped ease the threat of shortages.

U.S. crude (CLK3) plumbed a four-month low of $26.30, ending the day down $1.21 cents at $26.91. Brent crude oil (LCOc1) futures in London fell $1.15 to $24.35 per barrel, having also hit a four-month low.

"The capture of key oil facilities intact is adding to bearish sentiment," said Tony Machacek, a broker at Prudential-Bache International.

British Defense Chief Sir Michael Boyce said all key components of the southern Iraqi oilfields, which normally pump half the country's output, had been secured.

British troops also captured Iraq's Faw peninsula on the Gulf, a strategic oil export route.

"We are trying to make sure that the economic infrastructure of Iraq is left as intact as possible," said Boyce.

Only seven oil wellheads had been torched in the south, less than the 30 previously reported, although oil-filled trenches were also ablaze, he added.

He could not confirm reports that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein may have been killed or injured in the first wave of attacks.

The wellhead fires are a long-term worry for oil markets, but have no immediate impact on supply because Iraq's Gulf exports stopped on Monday and this has already been factored into prices, said Leo Drollas of London's Center for Global Energy Studies.

"Whether Iraqi oil stays in the ground or is burned above ground, it still doesn't get to the market," he said.

Iraq ranked as the world's seventh largest oil exporter before the war.

EXTRA OUTPUT

OPEC exporters, especially Saudi Arabia, have hiked output over the past few months, first to cover a strike in Venezuela and then to cool a price spike fueled by war fears.

Imports of oil in the United States are rising despite the cutoff in Iraqi supplies.

"It is the weight of oil, rather than the force of bombs, which is pushing markets lower," Drollas said. "OPEC is now producing more oil than has been lost."

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said OPEC output was now in line with its total level last November despite shortfalls from Iraq, Venezuela and Nigeria.

Western oil companies operating in Nigeria have slashed production and are expected to close a key export terminal this weekend because of political unrest.

Brokers said investors were selling positions built up on futures markets when U.S. crude rallied to a 12-year peak close to $40 in late February.

"The market has now moved from a war premium to a victory discount," said independent oil analyst Simon Games-Thomas.

OPEC ROW

Price hawks in OPEC are already concerned about the slump, which is good news for world economic growth, but hits revenue for the cartel of mostly Middle Eastern countries.

The dive has also revealed deep splits in the 11-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

OPEC Secretary-General Alvaro Silva said on Thursday that members have been authorized to use spare output capacity if necessary to make up a shortfall in Iraq supply.

But Iranian Oil Ministry Adviser Hossein Kazempour Ardebili said any output hike would be a "violation" since no decision had been taken to raise OPEC quota limits.

He said extra oil would be a "green light" to the United States to launch an attack on one of OPEC's founding members.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top exporter and a key U.S. ally, is pumping more than a million bpd above its quota of 8 million bpd, according independent estimates.

So far Gulf states near Iraq have reported no disruptions to oil production, nor any disturbances to tanker movements in the Gulf, which is the artery for 40 percent of world oil exports.

An oil refinery depot in southwestern Iran close to the border with Iraq was hit by a rocket on Friday, Iranian government sources said. It was not clear where the rocket, which hit the depot in the city of Abadan, had come from.

Iraq's neighbor, Kuwait, said it cut throughput at its refineries as a precautionary move after a near miss by two Iraqi missiles on Thursday.

www.greenbaynewschron.com By Monique Balas News-Chronicle

Teenagers are sometimes dismissed as being indifferent to current events, but anyone who attended an after-school forum at East High School Thursday afternoon might disagree.

The approximately 30 East High students who voluntarily participated had the chance to voice their opinions - often strong ones - and ask questions as history teacher Tony Kraszewski and science teacher Rich Krieg presented opposing arguments to the war in Iraq.

"I'm not going to be the one to tell Joe Suburban not to buy his SUV," said sophomore Joanna Wall in response to one speaker's opinion that soldiers should not have to die to maintain the comfortable American lifestyle.

Freshman Panya Ramasa suggested the United States look to other options for oil, such as buying it from Venezuela or pursuing alternative energy sources.

As a flurry of responses ensued, "This dialogue is what makes this country great," said moderator Curt Julian, the school's vice principal, commenting on student's somewhat heated reactions as he encouraged participants to stay calm.

Krieg, who was presenting the opposing viewpoint to war, said, "This is a foreign-policy problem. We need a whole new approach. After 9/11, the whole world loved us. Now all of those feelings have been squandered."

As with every comment, the hands went up.

"I have some questions," said Tristan Schuh, a sophomore. "Why now? We have been focused on Saddam since Desert Storm."

Wall cautioned that no one should confuse opinions about President Bush with their feelings about the war.

"You can be anti-Bush and for the war. You can totally disagree with Bush on every level, but the fact is, he's dangerous," she said.

After about two hours of debate, some teachers and students said they benefited from the forum.

Ramasa said he is normally very stubborn, and the forum helped to change his perspective. "It opened my eyes to what other people think," Ramasa said.

Melody Russ, a sophomore, said she learned much more about the situation in Iraq by hearing the students' and teacher's comments.

"I really didn't know much about the war," she said.

Kraszewski, the history teacher, said he felt the students who attended got a good educational experience.

"They got a little history and learned a little about the U.N, and the significance of oil," he said.

And Krieg felt that any chance to talk was important.

"People say the demonstrations going on are meaningless, but it's not if we've got people talking about it," he said.

www.bayarea.com Posted on Fri, Mar. 21, 2003 By Joe Roderick CONTRA COSTA TIMES

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - It takes a unique individual to hit behind Barry Bonds. Jeff Kent earned his money as Bonds' wing man for years, until even he struggled under the enormous weight of the job last season and was moved ahead of Bonds.

There are certain prerequisites for the job. The man should possess an easygoing demeanor, a steady pulse, or, as new Giants manager Felipe Alou so eloquently put it, he needs to be "a cold-blooded hitter."

Alou bestowed the compliment on third baseman Edgardo Alfonzo, who will hit fifth and try to protect Bonds, if such a thing can be done.

If there are concerns about Alfonzo's ability to function in perhaps the most important role in the team's lineup after his power numbers dropped the past two seasons, consider that he hit behind Mike Piazza in New York last season. He batted .330 with runners in scoring position last season -- .318 for his career -- and does not get embroiled in the machismo of a manager intentionally walking the Big Man to get to him.

"Fonzi checks his ego at the door when he comes to the ballpark," said Bobby Valentine, his former Mets manager. "He's not going to get caught up in those little games. I think he will be absolutely delighted by how many opportunities he has to hit with men in scoring position. When he's hitting behind Barry he's going to cash in enough to where Barry is going to swing the bat more than people think."

After eight seasons with the Mets, Alfonzo left when the team offered him a two-year, $10 million contract, a pay cut of about $1.7 million from 2002, he said. Alfonzo, who wanted to stay in New York, was deeply hurt.

"I think I deserved a little more than that," he said. "Like I told them, I didn't ask for $30 million for four years or $20 million for two years. I wanted something fair for me, for my future. But if they don't want you, they don't want you."

Boston was on the verge of signing Alfonzo to a two-year deal worth roughly $15 million before the Giants, who were close to severing ties with Kent, signed Alfonzo to a four-year, $26 million deal. Critics say the Giants took a gamble considering Alfonzo's slip in productivity and a back problem that lingered for two years until last season.

"As long as I feel good, they can say whatever they want," he said of his critics.

Alfonzo also gained weight in his latter years with the Mets, presumably because of improper offseason conditioning.

"A lot of people don't train as hard as Edgardo," Valentine said. "He might train too much. Obviously he gained weight, but that wasn't because of anything he was doing. He was getting a little older and maybe he had to alter his eating habits a little bit. But he was working out five hours a day during the offseason and worked with a personal trainer last year and the year before that."

Valentine and Alfonzo were together for six seasons and formed an interesting bond. The former manager may have grated on some of his players, but not Alfonzo, even when Valentine was quick to pull his player aside when he felt Alfonzo's performance wasn't first class.

"I think at times when the results weren't up to what he expected them to be, I'd turn up the volume," Valentine said. "He responds to everything. He responds to the pressure of the situation, responds to his teammates' need.

"Fonzi is one of the guys, you don't have to go in any detail with him. He's well aware of what's going on, and sometimes he gets caught up in things that are not of the utmost importance."

Such as?

"Like the previous night's game," Valentine said. "Maybe he hit a double and the guy couldn't score in front of him. He'd go up and try to hit a homer. You can't do anything about last night's game."

Alfonzo didn't mind his manager's occasional prodding.

"Sometimes he'd get really (expletive) at you and you have to understand the guy," he said. "It's part of the game. He came to me and said, 'You should be better than that,' and that's exactly what I needed, for him to come and yell at me and wake me up. To me, it was nice. He knows what I can do and every time he saw me do things I shouldn't do he called it to my attention."

Alfonzo, who still lives in New York, is a hero in his native Venezuela. Valentine remembers watching him play one winter when the Mets were converting him from third to second base.

"Down there he was nicknamed 'The Wall,'" Valentine said. "Nothing gets through him."

There is something else, Valentine said, that rarely escapes Alfonzo: a curveball.

"He can hit a breaking pitch, the best pitch, in the toughest situation," Valentine said. "People are spoiled by how easily Barry does that. This guy (Alfonzo) is a quality hitter. Pitchers wonder how the hell he hit that pitch."

www.bayarea.com Posted on Fri, Mar. 21, 2003 By Christina Hoag Knight Ridder

As the United States intensified its military assault on Iraq on Thursday, crude oil prices tumbled again to three-month lows in a day of price swings sparked by reports of oil well fires.

Crude oil futures sank for the sixth consecutive trading session, to $28.80 per barrel, a slide of $1.08 from Wednesday.

But during the day, prices swung between a high of $30.60 and a low of $28, volatility caused by U.S. military reports that three or four oil wells in the southern Iraqi field of Rumaila were ablaze.

The market is pricing based on a best-case scenario of a pristine military operation by U.S.-led forces,'' said John Kilduff, energy-risk management analyst at Fimat USA. But the volatility is incredible.''

Experts warned that although the market still anticipates a quick victory for the U.S.-led coalition, oil field sabotage and shipping lane disruption could easily cause prices to skyrocket. Because of that, motorists will see no immediate relief at the gasoline pump.

Gasoline prices remain at near record levels.

Looking better

Things are looking a lot better,'' said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Research Industry Foundation. The market is sensing that and we're seeing a reduction in prices, but there will be a lag before we see that in the gasoline on the street.''

Over the past week, the so-called ``war premium'' that has added $5 to $8 to oil prices since last fall has been almost wiped out.

Prices have plunged 28 percent since hitting a 12-year high on Feb. 27 of $39.99 despite the loss of almost all Iraqi production of 2.5 million barrels a day. The United Nations shuttered its Food for Oil program Monday.

``The irony of the situation is that Iraq's exports have been cut off,'' said John Kingston, global director of oil for Platts, an energy information provider.

A similar price plunge occurred in January 1991 when U.S.-led forces launched air raids on Iraq. Oil plummeted by a third from the pre-war escalation that jacked up prices to $41.15 in October 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

This time around, analysts say other factors besides anticipation of Saddam's easy defeat are softening prices.

OPEC's pledge

The market has been reassured by OPEC's pledge to goose output should supplies be disrupted for a prolonged period, and by the extra one million barrels a day from Saudi Arabia.

The Saudis also said this week that they are harboring a 50 million-barrel emergency reserve. And both the United States and Europe are showing more flexibility about releasing their strategic supplies.

Demand will also start dropping as the Northern Hemisphere moves into spring, and Venezuela's output is ramped up after a crippling workers' strike.

In other good news, U.S. crude stocks, which reached record lows as refiners were drawing down inventories rather than buying supplies at a premium price, are also starting to swell, although they remain at uncomfortably low levels unseen since the 1970s.

Sabotage outside Iraq is also a threat, analysts said. That danger pervades the Persian Gulf, above all at oil installations and shipping terminals.

Muslim fundamentalists can do anything to cut off production in another country,'' said W. David Montgomery, energy expert with Charles River Associates in Washington. Saudi security is really important, there are a lot of internal threats.''

www.vheadline.com Posted: Friday, March 21, 2003 By: Robert Rudnicki

Public Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz has submitted an appeal against the 7th Appeals Court's decision to grant Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce & Industry (Fedecamaras) president Carlos Fernandez complete liberty pending trial, following several weeks under house arrest accused of several offenses, including treason, for his role in the national work stoppage which ended on February 2.

The Ministry is certain that the decision should be declared null and void because only two of the three judges were present as one had to leave citing health reasons.  This the Ministry insists violates article 49 of the current Constitution.

The Ministry has also pointed out a number of other irregularities, claiming that the order for Fernandez' release was received by security police at 10:15 a.m. a full 15 minutes before the ruling was made at 10:30 a.m.