P.M. BRIEFING : Oil Firms Accused of Using Alaska Spill as Excuse to Increase Profits

BOSTON — Major oil companies took advantage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska to increase profits, Massachusetts Energy Secretary Sharon Pollard said today in a report investigating a 36-cent per gallon wholesale gasoline price hike.

But the Massachusetts Petroleum Council insisted that the price increases stemmed from higher production costs that had been working their way through the system since the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries production cutback of November, 1988. The council also said that changes in the gasoline formula mandated by environmental officials also played a key role in the price increases.

Pollard’s 38-page report, based on a series of public hearings, charged that the March spill of millions of gallons of crude oil in Alaska’s Prince William Sound did not cause a supply disruption sufficient to justify the rapid and sudden gasoline price hike.

It charged that retail service station operators generally did not share in the profits from the soaring gasoline prices. And the report charged the new environmental standards were responsible for at most an additional 1 to 3 cents per gallon.