News Briefs - March 10
The Latest Headlines:
- Ore. Congressman Wants to Expand Bridge Restrictions
- Industry Survey Says Gas Prices Continue to Rise
- Canadian Truck Workers Vote to End Strike
- Economists Scale Back U.S. Growth Forecasts
- Crude Oil Rises After U.K., U.S. Try to Set Iraq Deadline
- Industry Survey Says Gas Prices Continue to Rise
Ore. Congressman Wants to Expand Bridge Restrictions
Oregon Congressman Rep. Peter DeFazio told officials in that state that they should consider expanding the list of bridges that are off limits to overweight trucks to save money on road repairs, the Associated Press reported.AP said that truckers have opposed the possibility of expanding limits on Oregon’s bridges, citing time and cost concerns.
An Oregon Department of Transportation order that banned “heavy-haul trucks” from three bridges on Interstate 5 near Eugene prompted DeFazio’s request, AP said. The truck ban went into effect on March 5, AP said. Transport Topics
Industry Survey Says Gas Prices Continue to Rise
Supply problems in the most populous state in the union contributed to a 5-cent-a-gallon increase in cost of gasoline over the past two weeks, an industry survey said Monday.The Lundberg Survey, conducted by analyst Trilby Lundberg, said that nationwide, the average price of gasoline was about $1.75 a gallon on Friday. The survey’s record high is $1.77 a gallon, the Associated Press reported.
Lundberg said that the increase was due mainly to the switchover by California refineries to corn-based additives, like ethanol, and away from MTBE, a chemical that is blamed for contaminating drinking water, AP reported.
The nation’s highest price for gasoline, according to the survey was in San Francisco, where consumers were paying $2.10 a gallon for gas. By contrast, Atlanta claimed the lowest gasoline price at $1.51 a gallon.
Lundberg said that gasoline prices were likely to remain high as long as the situation in Iraq remained unsettled. Transport Topics
Canadian Truck Workers Vote to End Strike
Workers at a Sterling Truck plant in St. Thomas, Ontario voted Sunday to end their strike and agree to a new three-year contract, the Canadian Press newswire reported.Ninety-one percent of the 851 Canadian Auto Workers voted to ratify the tentative contract their negotiators reached with the company on March 7, CP said.
Sterling is a division of Freightliner LLC, one of DaimlerChrysler AG’s heavy-duty truck manufacturing subsidiaries.
The new deal offers employees a package of wage increases, pensions and specific health-care benefits, the union told CP.
This was the first negotiation the CAW handled on behalf of workers at the plant, CP reported. Transport Topics
Economists Scale Back U.S. Growth Forecasts
After the Labor Department reported March 7 that the U.S. economy shed 308,000 nonfarm jobs in February, economists at various Wall Street firms scaled back their estimates for how fast the economy can grow this year, cable business news network CNBC reported Monday.That drop in employment was the largest since commercial activity dropped abruptly in the period just after the 9/11 attacks, and raised questions about whether the economy may fall back into recession.
CNBC also said some economists now predict the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates when its policy panel meets March 18. Until the jobs report came out, analysts did not expect the Fed to cut rates until perhaps in May.
News services also reported that William Poole, president of the St. Louis regional Fed bank, said the jobs report was "obviously a disappointment" and showed the economy not recovering as expected. Poole is not a current-year voter on Fed rate cuts, but attends the policy meetings and participates in discussions leading up to the vote.
Analysts and Fed officials have said the economy has been suffering from business uncertainty that impedes new investment, pending the outcome of a potential U.S. war against Iraq, and suffering from the steep rise in fuel prices in recent months. Transport Topics
Crude Oil Rises After U.K., U.S. Try to Set Iraq Deadline
The price of crude oil rose in early trading Monday after the United Kingdom and the United States spent the weekend marshaling support of a proposed deadline of March 17 for Iraqi disarmament, Bloomberg reported.Debate was expected to begin sometime this week on a new United Nations Security Council Resolution enforcing a deadline of March 17 for Iraq to disclose and destroy any weapons of mass destruction. Such as deadline, analysts said, may push the region closer to war.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, the price of crude oil rose 26 cents to $38.04 a barrel in electronic trading Monday morning.
Fears of a supply-disrupting war in the Middle East, along with a colder-than-usual winter and a strike in Venezuela have pushed oil and motor fuel prices higher so far in 2003. Transport Topics
