Business news in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“It seems like home sales are grinding along in something of a rut.We’re not seeing

a whole lot of activity, either up or down.”

Michael Pakko,

chief economist at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Article, 1D

Up 3.7%, U.S. oil output hits a high

U.S. oil production surged last week to the highest level since January 1997, reducing the country’s dependence on imported fuels as new technology unlocks crude trapped in shale formations.

Crude output rose by 3.7 percent to 6.509 million barrels a day by the end of last week, the Energy Department reported Wednesday. The U.S. met 83 percent of its energy needs in the first six months of the year, department data show. If the trend continues through 2012, it will be the highest level of self-sufficiency since 1991. Imports have declined 3.2 percent from the same period a year earlier.

“This has been driven by shale, and the two states leading the way are North Dakota and Texas,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC, an energy consulting firm in Houston. “It appears that over the next five years, U.S. oil production could climb to well over 8 million barrels a day.”

Oil closed at $89.98 on Wednesday, down $1.39, or 1.5 percent, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Crude prices are set to decline over the next six to nine months because of rising production from the U.S., David Martin, an analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said at a conference last Thursday in London.

  • Bloomberg NewsCEO at beleaguered RadioShack quits

FORT WORTH - RadioShack’s chief executive officer, James Gooch, has agreed to step down immediately and is leaving its board of directors, the struggling consumer electronics company said Wednesday.

Chief Financial Officer Dorvin Lively will serve as interim CEO during the search for a permanent replacement, the company said.

Gooch became CEO in May 2011 as part of the company’s succession plan. Gooch, who joined RadioShack in 2006 as its chief financial officer, took over as CEO when Julian Day retired.

In July, RadioShack posted an unexpected second-quarter loss and suspended its dividend. The chain’s troubles are partly due to wider problems in the bricks-and-mortar electronics industry and add fuel to the notion that selling consumer electronics in physical stores is becoming less and less viable.

Since the beginning of the year, RadioShack shares are down more than 70 percent.

RadioShack, based in Fort Worth, has about 4,700 company-run stores in the U.S. and Mexico. It has approximately 1,500 U.S. wireless phone centers and about 1,100 dealer and other outlets worldwide.

  • The Associated Press

Robust soybean harvest expected

JONESBORO - The soybean harvest is under way in northeast Arkansas, and agriculture officials say yields may rival a record set in 2004.

Officials say the 2012 harvest may yield 39 bushels of soybeans per acre, as did the 2004 crop.

University of Arkansas Soybean Agronomist Jeremy Ross said he has been seeing good yields across the state.

Ross said irrigation and the change in the weather late in the summer helped the crop succeed. Rainfall from Hurricane Isaac and the cooler weather that followed the intense heat of the peak of the drought were beneficial.

Soybean prices are moving between $15 and $16 per bushel.

  • The Associated Press

Fed official backs bond-buying step

WASHINGTON - A Federal Reserve regional president who has advocated more aggressive moves on the part of the central bank to combat high unemployment says the country cannot afford timid efforts to support the economy.

Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said Wednesday that he wholeheartedly supported the moves the Fed took earlier this month to buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities every month to drive interest rates lower and stimulate economic growth.

His comments in a speech to a business group in Hammond, Ind., were the latest in what has become a battle of words among Fed officials over the course of interest-rate policy. On Tuesday, Charles Plosser, president of the Fed’s Philadelphia branch, expressed doubts that the Fed’s latest stimulus efforts would work.

Plosser’s comments were viewed negatively by financial markets with the Dow Jones industrial average losing 101.37 points Tuesday. Plosser argued that the new bondbuying effort was unlikely to boost economic growth and risked harming the Fed’s credibility as an inflation fighter.

The Fed in its Sept. 13 decision decided to begin a third round of bond-buying, a process known as quantitative easing. It said it would keep purchasing bonds and would consider providing additional support until the labor market showed substantial improvement.

  • The Associated Press

Pennsylvania hit on oil-well checks

PITTSBURGH - Pennsylvania regulators aren’t inspecting tens of thousands of oil and gas wells even once a year, a new report says. But state officials say they’re inspecting most new wells in the Marcellus Shale region, which is the right place to focus.

The report issued Tuesday by Earthworks, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit, found that more than 66,000 active wells weren’t inspected by the Department of Environmental Protection last year, and that many companies cited for violations aren’t punished.

Department spokesman Katherine Gresh said in a statement that the agency inspected 78 percent of newer shale gas wells last year, and that older conventional wells usually operate for decades without problems. She said that failing to note the major differences between old and new wells “is comparing apples to oranges and misleading the public.”

Earthworks says the number of inspections don’t meet the goal of the department’s own guidelines, even for new wells.

“There’s at least a quarter of all new wells that aren’t getting inspected. We still think that’s not good enough,” said Bruce Baizel, an Earthworks staff attorney.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has made it possible to tap into deep reserves of oil and gas but has also raised concerns about pollution from wastewater.

Business, Pages 26 on 09/27/2012

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