Nicaragua gets IDB loan

The Inter-American Development Bank approved a $34 million loan to Nicaragua September 17 over U.S. opposition. The loan - the first to Nicaragua since a January 1982 World Bank loan - will finance a hydroelectric power project.

In Nov. 1981, Argentina and Chile had joined U.S. opposition and successfully blocked a $30 million fisheries loan from the IDB. This time out - following Nicaragua's support for Argentina in the war over the Falklands - the U.S. stood alone.

Mobil pays for dumping

Mobil Oil Corp. agreed to pay Alabama $2.5 million in penalties and clean up costs on Sept. 28 in the settlement of an Alabama court case for illegally discharging fluids from its drilling operations in Mobile Bay into the bay.

Mobil denied corporate liability, according to the settlement, though it fired 15 employees and disciplined eight others.

The fine sets aside $170,000 to create a watchdog unit over Mobil's drilling operations.

Arco gets China drilling rights

Arco and its partner, Santa Fe International, signed a contract Sept. 19 to drill for oil in a 3,500 square mile block in the South China Sea. After four years of on-again, off-again negotiations, Arco thus be comes the first American company to get the go-ahead to drill offshore. Drilling will start in April 1983, but production is at least 5 years away. Details of the contract were not published.

Jamaica buys refinery I from Exxon

The Jamaican government of Prime Minister Edward Seaga, despite its proclaimed policy of encouraging the private sector, bought an oil refinery from an Exxon subsidiary in early Sept. for $14 million.

Esso West Indies, according to a statement by the state-owned Petroleum Company of Jamaica, the official purchaser, felt the 26,000 barrel per day refinery was not profitable enough.

U.S. firms bribe Mexican oil company

Two U.S. oil equipment companies in late September pleaded guilty to charges of overseas bribery in a Justice Department investigation of more than 20 individuals and companies believed to have made bribery payments of at least $45 million to officials of Pemex, the national Mexican petroleum company.

The Justice Department case claims that Houston-based Crawford Enterprises arranged contracts worth $225 million with Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, between 1977 and 1979. The contracts for the sale of compression turbines by Crawford, Ruston Gas Turbines of Houston and a unit of International Harvester allegedly included a 5% surcharge for bribes. The $10 million inducement to sign the contracts were paid through a Mexican firm to two sub-directors of Pemex, the Justice Department claims.

Ruston, a division of Ruston Gas Turbines of England, pleaded guilty Sept. 23 to paying over $500,000 in bribes, agreeing to pay a $750,000 fine and cooperate in the ongoing investigation. The C.E. Miller Company of California and its chairman Charles Miller admitted on Sept. 22 aiding illegal payments by Crawford. C.E. Miller manufactured some of the equipment covered by the contract.

Crawford and International Harvester have denied any wrongdoing. More charges are expected.

EPA loosens pesticide rules

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed dropping the requirement that non-agricultural pesticides be proved effective before they can be marketed.

The EPA announced Sept.15 that it doesn't think companies should have to prove to the EPA that their pesticides work against specific bugs. Four years ago, agricultural pesticides were exempt from this requirement.

The EPA says this will save time in the registration process and costs for both "industry and the taxpayer."

The agency also proposed rules eliminating the need for a company to clear a pesticide with the EPA if it is marketed by another company for the same use.

Business on the "business press"

Big business executives think the business press is pretty good, according to a Gallup poll of 800 executives of Fortune 500, medium and small firms on their views of such publications as Business Week, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.

The big company executives, according to the Wall Street Journal, granted the press high ratings (69%), but 20% griped of inaccurate reporting and 17% complained of a "tendency toward sensationalism."

While 81% said business journalists were "fair-minded," 80% also said they were "likely to cover complex issues simplistically" and 78% thought journalists concentrated too heavily on unfavorable news.

As for the rigorousness of investigative reporting: 50% said it was not likely that journalists would ferret out some negative information which the company did not want disclosed. And 24% of the big execs (and 62% of small business owners) said business journalists were just plain "gullible."