Business news in brief

LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I want to keep the company on a steady production pace and focus on efficiency.We need to level off and focus on running a real tight ship.”

Elon Musk, Tesla Motors Inc. CEO, on production of Tesla electric cars Article, 1D

U.S. oil, gas rigs drop by 1, to 1,761

HOUSTON - Oil-field services company Baker Hughes Inc. said the number of rigs actively exploring for oil and natural gas in the U.S. dropped by one this week to 1,761.

The Houston-based company said in its weekly report Friday that 1,329 rigs were actively exploring for oil and 428 for gas. Four were listed as miscellaneous. A year ago, Baker Hughes counted 1,981 working rigs.

Of the major oil- and gas-producing states, Pennsylvania gained six rigs, Texas rose by five and Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado and West Virginia each increased by one.

Oklahoma lost nine rigs, North Dakota shed four, Wyoming decreased by two and Louisiana and New Mexico each dropped one. California remained unchanged.

The rig count peaked at 4,530 in 1981 and bottomed at 488 in 1999.

Ford will debut minivan in Geneva

BERLIN - Ford Motor Co. said it will introduce its new Tourneo Courier minivan at this year’s Geneva Motor Show.

The company said Friday in a statement that the vehicle’s global debut would be March 5 at the show in Switzerland. It’s also planning to display the EcoSport compact sport utility vehicle, being built for European markets.

The auto show opens to the public March 7 and runs through March 17.

• The Associated Press

East Coast refiner to tote oil by train

HOUSTON - PBF Energy Inc. is betting that shipping discounted crude by rail from Canada and North Dakota can make its East Coast refineries profitable on the heels of several shutdowns in the region.

The refiner can unload 70,000 barrels a day of light crude and 40,000 of heavy oil at its Delaware City, Del., plant, and will add 40,000 barrels a day more of heavy-oil unloading capacity by the end of the year, said Tom Nimbley, chief executive officer of the Parsippany, N.J.-based company, in a fourth-quarter earnings call with analysts Thursday.

PBF, which has the largest share of East Coast refining capacity at 28 percent, is trying to avoid the fate of other refiners who have shut or sold plants in the region. The loss of refining capacity has tightened fuel supplies near the New York Harbor, the delivery point for gasoline and heating-oil futures.

“The availability of domestic and Canadian crudes at much better differentials to our Brent marker should lead to much better results on the East Coast in 2013, and even better than that in 2014 when our ability to process Canadian heavy doubles,” said PBF Chairman Tom O’Malley.

GM’s South Korean arm expanding

General Motors Co.’s South Korean unit plans to invest about $7.3 billion over five years to expand in a country where it made four of every 10 Chevrolets sold worldwide last year.

GM Korea Co. will expand manufacturing facilities and double the size of its design center this year to the company’s third-largest after U.S. and Brazil, the Bupyeong, South Korea-based company said in a statement.

The automaker is increasing investment at the unit as it starts building new models to compete with a resurgent Toyota Motor Corp. The maker of the Prius regained the top spot in global sales from GM last year.

“GM Korea will continue to play a major role in our global growth plans,” Tim Lee, GM international operations head, said in the statement.

GM reported a third-straight year of profit in 2012, led by sales in the U.S. and China, while losses in Europe more than doubled. The company is counting on Asia for growth outside the U.S. as it expects European demand will fall further this year.

GM vehicles produced in South Korea are exported to 150 markets on six continents, the company said in October.

• Bloomberg News

Cargill urges update of waterways

The drought that almost halted barge traffic on the Mississippi River illustrates that the U.S. must improve inland waterways to remain competitive in export markets, a Cargill Inc. shipping executive said.

“Our locks and dams are aging, and they’re not aging very gracefully,” Rick Calhoun, the president of Cargill’s marine and terminal division, said Friday in a presentation at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual outlook forum in Arlington, Va.

Low water levels on the Mississippi, the busiest U.S. waterway, threatened to shut down commercial barge traffic in December and January, giving the public “an understanding of the importance of waterways to America,” he said.

Companies including AEP River Operations LLC, a unit of American Electric Power Co. of Columbus, Ohio, and American Commercial Lines Inc. of Jeffersonville, Ind., idled boats because of the slowdown, showing the potential for losses to commerce should infrastructure failures cause more delays, Calhoun said.

Shippers including Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. of Decatur, Ill., use the river to float an estimated $2.8 billion of cargo, including grain, coal and fertilizer, during a typical January, according to the American Waterways Operators, which also is based in Arlington.

• Bloomberg News

Microsoft’s storage arm suffers failure

REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft is dealing with a worldwide failure of its online service that stores data for a wide range of business customers.

The software-maker said its Azure service went down Friday shortly before 3 p.m. CST. The breakdown prevented Azure customers from accessing files stored in Microsoft’s data centers.

In a Friday statement acknowledging the problem, Microsoft didn’t say what crippled Azure. The company said it was working to fix the problem.

Azure’s failure illuminates the pitfalls of storing important information in remote data centers. Online storage, often called “cloud computing,” is growing in appeal because it allows workers to pull up data, wherever they are, to an Internet-connected device.

• The Associated Press