The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration got so worried that in 2007 it started a major push for safety inspection in refineries and found more than 1,000 workplace violations in the industry.

“If the aviation industry were having the same number of significant serious accidents as the refinery industry was having you probably wouldnt see people flying too much,” Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board chairman John Bresland told The Associated Press Friday.

The internal insurance report, given to federal safety regulators two years ago but never publicized, was all too familiar to Breslands agency, which said Fridays deadly explosion revives concerns theres something terribly wrong with the industry.

The board, which makes nonbinding recommendations, oversees investigations on accidents in 150 refineries in the United States and tens of thousands of chemical plants. But about half of the outstanding investigations are of accidents at refineries, officials said.

The cause of Fridays blast at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, about 70 miles north of Seattle on Puget Sound, was under investigation. The blaze started during maintenance work on a unit that processes highly flammable liquid derived during the refining process, the company said.

Six investigators with the chemical safety board were dispatched to the scene. Tesoro, based in San Antonio, was fined $85,700 last April for 17 serious safety and health violations at the plant.

In November, the state reached a settlement with Tesoro, requiring in part that the company correct the hazards and hire a third-party consultant to do a safety audit. The settlement reduced the total penalty to $12,250 and lowered the number of violations to three.

Jeff Haffner, associate general counsel for Tesoro, said the company is investigating the blast and has been working to correct the problems found.

It was the largest fatal refinery accident since a 2005 explosion at a BP American refinery in Texas killed 15 people and injured another 170.

Officials at the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association said their industry is not only safe, it has a better safety record than the U.S. manufacturing sector as a whole.

The industry is “one of the leaders” in safety, said Charlie Drevna, the associations president and actually has a lower rate of injuries per workers than the manufacturing industry as a whole.

That Texas refinery had a low injury rate, but people were killed “because they didnt properly maintain their equipment,” said David Michaels, OSHA chief and deputy assistant secretary of labor.

“We think this continues to be a very serious concern, a very serious issue in the petroleum industry,” Michaels said late Friday in a telephone conference. “Were trying to prevent more tragedies.”

Last month, an explosion at a New Mexico refinery killed two people, putting the refinery death toll since January 2008 at least 10. Refinery accidents have killed four people in Texas since January 2008.

Insurance giant Swiss Re gave the chemical safety board the report warning of problems two years ago. It looked at the losses per refinery and per amount of oil refined and found that those in America were “significantly higher” than the rest of the world.

“We believe the difference is due to the operational hazard,” the Swiss Re report said, saying U.S. plants are “pushing the operating envelope.”

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BP PLC chief economist Christof Ruehl said consolidation was likely in the refining sector after oil companies reported billion dollar losses at the end of last year amid falling demand.

“To put it bluntly and shortly, there will have to be some consolidation in the global refining industry,” Ruehl said at Londons annual International Petroleum Week.

Ruehl said that lower output from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the global economic recovery would continue to support crude oil prices this year, setting a price floor.

But he was skeptical of a stronger rebound in demand that has been forecast by some commentators, saying that daily consumption growth would remain below the average levels of 1.1 million barrels recorded in the years leading up to the global financial crisis.

He said that prices are likely to hold in recent trading ranges - crude has fluctuated within a relatively tight $15 band between $69 and $84 per barrel since the start of October - as excess capacity keeps them from spiking over the next few years.

Even if demand bounced back stronger than anticipated, spare production capacity would prevent a spike in prices, he added.

“I would expect oil prices to stay in the current range,” he said. “Even if the good years were to return tomorrow it would still take more than three years to burn through spare capacity to get back to a market as tight as it was before the crunch in 2008.”

“I think its very unlikely that we will see asset price spikes over the next few years,” he added.

A series of production cuts by OPEC to support prices has resulted in spare capacity of around 6 million barrels of oil per day.

The annual gathering of the oil industry, organized by the Energy Institute, is a little more subdued this year even though oil companies have begun to pump more petroleum and bring in more profits.

Shell UK Chairman James Smith, hosting the meeting, noted that they emerged from a miserable couple of years.

Many forecasters believe that oil demand in developed economies has peaked.

Still, ExxonMobil International Ltd. Chairman Brad Corson said the industry had to think medium and long term, when demand from emerging economies like China is still expected to soar.

“Even though our industry has faced some significant challenges during the recent global economic downturn, we must remember that economic cycles are not new to us,” Corson said.

The International Energy Agency last week bumped up its forecasts for world oil demand because of growing economic activity in developing countries in Asia, predicting in its monthly report that oil demand will average 86.5 million barrels a day this year, or 1.6 million barrels a day more than in 2009.

“Moving on to the year 2030, we expect global energy demand to be almost 35 per cent higher than it was in 2005 - even taking into consideration the impact of recent economic conditions and substantial improvements in energy efficiency,” said Corson.

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“People are still concerned about GMs future and purchasing a GM car may seem like more risk than a consumer wants to take,” said Rebecca Lindland, an analyst at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. “This is a company that is still recovering from bankruptcy.”

A 15 percent increase in industrywide sales in December capped automakers first quarterly improvement since the last three months of 2006. The recession and Chapter 11 filings at the predecessors of Detroit-based GM and Chrysler dragged 2009 new-vehicle purchases to the lowest in almost three decades.

U.S. sales of cars and light trucks improved to 1.03 million, according to industry researcher Autodata Corp. That equated with a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 11.3 million vehicles, Autodata said. The year-earlier rate was 10.3 million.

Unloading Brands

GM said its December decline was driven chiefly by a 33 percent drop in deliveries to business customers such as rental- car companies and a 55 percent plunge for the Hummer, Pontiac, Saturn and Saab brands that are being shut or sold. GM said sales rose 2.2 percent for the Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick models that the biggest U.S. automaker is keeping.

Last months tally reflected an unfavorable comparison with results from a year earlier, when fleet sales were increased before a cut in early 2009 output, said Susan Docherty, GMs North American sales and marketing chief.

“Im very encouraged with what were getting done on our core brands — Chevy, Buick, GMC and Cadillac — and weve had a very orderly wind down on Pontiac and Saturn,” Docherty said in a Bloomberg Television interview.

GM emerged in July from a 40-day, $50 billion, government- backed bankruptcy that gave taxpayers an ownership stake of about 61 percent. The automaker began repaying some of the $6.7 billion in outstanding government loans last month.

Negative Stories

“Ford is much further along in their recovery than GM, and it shows,” Lindland said. “From inside the industry, we are more confident things are getting better at GM. For consumers, that still isnt the case because there are still a lot of negative stories left on GM.”

Michael DiGiovanni, GMs chief sales analyst, said the automakers December performance was “very encouraging” in light of its bankruptcy restructuring.

“We were able to maintain 20 percent of the light-vehicle market, which is 3 share points ahead of Toyota and 4 share points ahead of Ford and keeps us solidly in the No. 1 position in the U.S.,” DiGiovanni told reporters on a conference call.

Ford, the only major U.S.-based automaker to forgo a federal bailout, cited an 83 percent gain for the Fusion and a doubling of Taurus sales.

The shares of the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker rose 68 cents, or 6.6 percent, to $10.96 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. That was the highest closing price since July 2005.

Industry Total

Industry sales for last year fell 21 percent to 10.4 million units, the fewest since 1982, Autodata said. U.S. sales were 13.2 million in 2008, according to Autodata, after averaging 16.8 million this decade through 2007.

Honda Motor Co. said December U.S. deliveries increased 24 percent, and Nissan Motor Co. rose 18 percent, while Chrysler Group LLC declined 3.7 percent.

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British insurers offer customers involved in an accident that wasnt their fault a replacement car and free legal advice. In return for directing these customers to law firms and to car- rental firms such as Helphire Plc, the insurer typically receives from law firms and car rental firms a fee of up to 900 pounds. The aggressive pursuit of payouts by car-hire firms and lawyers from the insurer of the at-fault driver has bumped up claims across the industry, adding 10 percent to the cost of car insurance, or about 82 pounds ($136) a person, the Association of British Insurers said.

“Its such an appalling and inefficient process which adds nothing but cost and more noses in the trough feeding from those costs,” said David Williams, managing director of claims at Paris-based Axa SA, Europes second-largest insurer. “Referral fees are so close to being a kickback its astounding.”

British insurers havent made an underwriting profit, which excludes investment income, for at least 11 years. They receive about 100 million pounds a year from car-rental companies and lawyers, according to the Accident Management Association, which lobbies for the car-rental industry. The problem is that it costs insurers even more when their customer is the driver at fault and they are on the paying end. Referral fees have fuelled a surge in legal fees and car-rental charges thats costing the industry as much as 1.8 billion pounds a year, according to Axa.

Bloodthirsty Lawyers

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, the U.K.s biggest car insurer through its Direct Line and Churchill brands, said claims costs grew 21 percent to 941 million pounds in the third quarter compared with a year ago.

“Driven in part by bloodthirsty lawyers, and in part by a recession, there is a spike across the industry in people making bodily injury claims in the motor book,” RBS Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hester told analysts on a Nov. 6 conference call.

While insurers agree that payments to car-rental companies and personal injury lawyers, which arent illegal, are helping fuel claims inflation, the companies are at odds over a solution.

Axa and Aviva are trying to reach agreements with rivals to cap the costs of car hire. Fortis, which sells insurance through Marks & Spencer Group Plc, is developing its own replacement-car service as a cheaper alternative to using external firms, director Rob Smale said in an interview.

Part of Industry

Admiral, which makes half its profit from undisclosed “ancillary” earnings, doesnt plan to abandon the practice. “We see this as the way the industry is and we are part of the industry,” CEO Henry Engelhardt said in an interview at his office in Cardiff, Wales. “Well do what we have to do to survive in this environment.”

Insurance companies, “whilst very critical of referral fees, are very good at becoming the recipients of them and dictating what the fees are,” said Martin Heskins, civil justice policy adviser at the Law Society, which represents British lawyers.

Everyone Does It

Insurers, motor garages and brokers can earn up to 400 pounds for each non-fault driver they refer to car-rental firms, said Alan Gilbert, Helphires group technical director. The fee for directing a customer to a personal injury lawyer can be as much as 900 pounds, Axas Williams said.

Aviva, Admiral and Fortis said they accepted such payments. RBS, RSA Group Plc and Zurich Financial Services AG declined to comment. Axa said it doesnt receive referral fees.

“Everyone else is doing it so youre almost forced to go down that route to ensure the premiums you quote are as good as what everyone else is able to offer,” said Richard Ellis, Avivas head of motor and personal injury claims.

The Ministry of Justice is planning a new compensation process, to be implemented next April, for all claims under 10,000 pounds that will fix lawyers fees and speed up payouts from insurers. Heskins of the Law Society said the system will apply to 80 percent of motor claims.

“We recognize that the whole system of compensation isnt working as it should,” said Malcolm Tarling, a spokesman for the ABI. “There are practices like referral fees that insurers will have to take a good hard long look at,” if the market is to be reformed, he said.

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Agriculture Department numbers back up the theory. Peanuts processed for snacks - items such as sandwich crackers that were heavily recalled during the outbreak - were slightly down for the accounting year ending July 31. But peanuts used for peanut butter set an all-time record at 1.1 billion pounds, topping the previous years total by 100 million pounds.

That was enough to make the years overall peanut production the third-highest in history, missing the top mark set in 2005 by just a fraction of 1 percent, with nearly 2 billion pounds being processed.

“This is very unusual,” said Sanford Miller, senior fellow at the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the University of Maryland. He said the rebound from a national food scare typically takes far longer, sometimes years.

“It shows you how important peanut butter is to the American diet,” Miller said. “People just wont give it up.”

Industry leaders would not have predicted this outcome earlier this year after a salmonella outbreak linked to the Peanut Corp. of America was blamed for sickening hundreds of people and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history.

Officials projected massive losses as the Food and Drug Administration, in January and February, added item after item to a lengthy recall list of peanut products deemed potentially dangerous. Bracing for a long-term slump, the industry launched an aggressive public relations campaign to convince people the contamination was isolated.

The public was skeptical. Sales of peanut products plummeted, particularly snack items.

Even retail sales of peanut butter - most brands of which were removed from the tainted peanut supplies - dropped from a strong average of about $100 million in monthly sales through the end of 2008 to about $87 million for the four weeks ending Feb. 22, according to Nielsen, a market research firm.

But the slump was short-lived. By March sales had bounced back to their pre-outbreak strength, remaining high through the summer and fall.

“Theres an old adage in the industry that you can almost track the economy by consumption of peanut butter,” said Stanley Fletcher, a peanut economist at the University of Georgia. “Its basically the cheapest source of protein.”

Tim Burch, a peanut farmer from Newton in southern Georgia, said he and others were “sweating it” in February. Orders stopped coming in and inventories began backing up as tainted peanuts were leading the news just about every day, he said.

There were many industry losers in the salmonella outbreak, including those who got stuck with potentially tainted products and little immediate recourse from the company responsible, which filed for bankruptcy.

Also, the booming production didnt translate into record retail sales. Even with the quick rebound, the downturn in the weeks surrounding the scare left annual peanut butter sales down 2.5 percent from the previous year. Industry officials believe peanut snacks were down even more.

That gap between sales and production suggests to some that production may have been boosted by the scare as manufacturers and other bulk users such as schools restocked after throwing out potentially tainted supplies.

“It took a while for (Peanut Corp. of America) to trace back where all that peanut butter had gone, and because of consumer confusion there was a lot of peanut butter that was discarded,” said Patrick Archer, president of the American Peanut Council. “I think some of the increase was to replace stocks.”

But Archer said “the real story here is that peanut butter sales are strong.”

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And Congress is debating slashing billions more in Medicare funding as part of health care reform.

Add it all up, and the nursing home industry is headed for a crisis, industry officials say.

“We can foresee the possibility of nursing homes having to close their doors,” said David Hebert, a senior vice president at the American Health Care Association. “I certainly foresee that well have to let staff go.”

The funding crisis comes as the nations baby boomers age ever closer toward needing nursing home care. The nations 16,000 nursing homes housed 1.85 million people last year, up from 1.79 million in 2007, U.S. Census Bureau figures show.

Already this year, 24 states have cut funding for nursing home care and other health services needed by low-income people who are elderly or disabled, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research firm based in Washington, D.C.

Some facilities are now closed because of money problems - including four in Connecticut - and others have laid off workers because of what industry officials say are inadequate Medicaid reimbursement rates. Medicare cuts are troubling, they say, because the higher Medicare reimbursements have been used to compensate for the lower Medicaid rates.

In Griswold, Conn., the communitys only nursing home shut down earlier this year because of rising costs and an inability to pay for $4.9 million in needed renovations for the 90-bed facility.

“A 92-year-old woman was screaming and crying as she was loaded into the ambulance, saying This is my home,” Griswold First Selectman Philip Anthony said. His 88-year-old mother was a resident of the same home at the time.

Anthony sought and found a new facility for his mother, but she died of pneumonia before the Griswold Health and Rehabilitation Center closed in the spring.

“To be hit with a sudden and deliberate closure like this, it just drained the heart right out of you,” Anthony said.

Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell and state lawmakers gave no Medicaid rate increases to nursing homes in the state last fiscal year and kept the funding flat for the next two years.

“Were really teetering on the edge of what we see as the collapse of the long-term care system,” she said.

Chernoff said many of Connecticuts 240 or so nursing homes have been reducing workers hours to deal with money problems, while two are in bankruptcy now.

Also this year across the country:

- The Motion Picture & Television Fund said in January it would close a hospital and nursing home in Woodland Hills, Calif., founded to care for actors and other entertainment industry workers, because of financial losses.

- The Westchester Medical Center in suburban New York said it would close a nursing home and cut 400 jobs to deal with Medicaid and other fund cuts.

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Central bank Governor Glenn Stevens left the benchmark interest rate unchanged at a half-century low of 3 percent last week for a fifth month, partly to spur the construction industry. A report on Sept. 9 may show home loans fell 1 percent in July, the first decline in 10 months, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts.

“Industry activity is continuing to fall amid tight credit conditions and ongoing difficulties amongst firms in securing new project work,” said Tony Pensabene, associate director at the Canberra-based association.

“However, more positive developments were the moderation in the pace of the industrys contraction, and the continued growth in house building,” he added.

A gauge of engineering demand dropped 3.2 points to 31.8 in August, todays report showed. An index measuring apartment building surged 15 points to 44.4 and commercial construction gained 1.3 to 39.6.

Demand for houses rose 0.6 points to 52.5.

Todays survey is based on responses from about 100 construction companies on sales, new orders, deliveries, employment and input costs.

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The WTO decision isnt expected to have much immediate effect on Airbus and Boeing. A separate WTO ruling, on a claim against the U.S. from the 27-nation European Union, is expected in six months. Current projects - jets like Boeings 787 and Airbuss A350 - will remain on track.

Passengers are unlikely to see changes to ticket prices as a result of the dispute, though consumers could feel some effects in other ways. They include higher prices for handbags and oranges as the EU and United States seek to penalize each others exports after the ruling.

But in the longer term, competition could escalate from countries eager to aid their growing aircraft makers. China, India and Brazil are competing in the market for smaller regional jets and aspire to cut more deeply into the Boeing-Airbus dominance over big passenger planes.

If the WTO gives governments in the U.S. and Europe some leeway to aid their aerospace industries, it could lead other nations to do the same. China already has been accused of illegally subsidizing manufacturing sectors that it hopes to protect, such as steel producers.

“The Chinese are doing it wantonly today,” said Robert Scott, senior international economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

Analysts say Beijings tendency to erect trade barriers would likely be extended to its aviation industry.

China announced plans last year to build jumbo jets under a partnership between two plane makers that were split off from state-owned China Aviation Industry Corp. in 1999. It hopes to unveil a new engine for the planes by 2016. Analysts dont expect such projects to challenge Airbus and Boeing for several decades. But Beijing wants a domestic aviation industry to lessen its reliance on those two plane makers.

Boosted by state subsidies, the Brazilian company Embraer and Canadas Bombardier already have cut into the market for smaller regional jets designed for shorter flights. Over the past decade, Brazil and Canada have defended themselves in WTO disputes over government aid for their industries.

Boeing is looking to the WTO to set guidelines for how the long-term competition over planes will proceed.

“We are hoping these rules will give clear guidance to all companies that want to develop large civil aircraft,” said Ted Austell, a vice president for Boeing.

Chicago-based Boeing and Airbus, a subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. based in France, have been pillars in the industrial economies of the U.S. and Europe. Boeing long held the No. 1 industry position. But Airbus surpassed it earlier this decade.

Boeing especially worries about European aid for the Airbus A350 XWB. The A350 is a mid-size jet that will rival Boeings 787 plane, a project thats been beset by delays and problems. Britain, France and Germany have already pledged funding of more than $4 billion for the A350. The overall development cost for Airbus expected to be nearly $16 billion.

Airbus argues that Boeings subsidy estimate is inflated. European officials counter that U.S. officials have improperly funneled aid to Boeings commercial division through the companys defense unit.

Airbus also downplays the effect of any WTO decision on its current line of jets, including the A350, or its overall business, saying the case involves only funding from 2005 or before. It says the WTO case wont affect its operations or the prices it charges for planes.

The market for commercial jets has stumbled in the past year, hobbled by the global recession that has lowered demand for costly equipment. But over the next several decades, aviation is expected to grow sharply as fast-growing nations like China expand.

Boeing estimates there are 18,800 passenger jets in the global fleet. By 2028, that number is expected to reach 35,600 planes.

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The faculty who had shared data, expertise, or materials with industry were “substantially” more likely to have reported positive results in their trials than those who didnt receive money from drug or device makers. Ghostwriting, undisclosed conflicts of interest, secrecy and biases are more likely in industry-supported research, previous studies have shown, said report author Eric G. Campbell, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Universitys medical school in Boston.

“There are some well-documented negative effects of industry funding, but a large portion of these people have reported they think it helped lead to important scientific discoveries,” Campbell said in a telephone interview. “Someone has to decide how to make those two things balance.”

In addition to the 41 percent who said the relationship with industry contributed to their most important scientific work, 44 percent said that sharing data with the pharmaceutical industry led to research that wouldnt have otherwise been possible.

Disclosure Urged

To balance the positive and negative effects of company ties, doctors should disclose any ties with industry, such as owning a patent on a drug or receiving speakers fees from a company, to their institutions, peers and patients, Campbell said.

“Highly educated people may be more likely to feel they arent susceptible to influence, but theres a huge literature to suggest it happens,” Campbell said. Scientists may unwittingly bias their trials by shaping the doses, the benchmark for a products success in the study, and choice of drugs used as the basis for comparisons.

More government funding for comparative effectiveness research, which weighs the merits of one drug or device against others, could counteract flawed information, Campbell said. The survey found that the scientists who did this type of research received significantly less industry money than other faculty, and about half of them received no industry funding at all.

Published Research

Congress approved $1.1 billion for the research as part of the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed in February. Republicans and companies led by Pfizer Inc., the worlds largest drugmaker, said afterward they worried comparative effectiveness research may be used to limit treatment. The Obama administration said the research is central to lowering costs and improving the quality of patient care.

The study was of 1,663 scientists who had at least one research article listed in the National Library of Medicines Medline database from 2003 to 2005. It was conducted by mail from September 2006 through February 2007.

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Chinas steel industry is the worlds largest but has failed to translate that into clout in negotiating iron ore prices. Beijing put a state-sanctioned group in charge of negotiating this years supply contracts but talks are deadlocked six weeks after the last agreements expired June 30.

“I believe China should have some say in the international trade of iron ore, and I believe our influence is not enough,” Li said at a news conference.

Li gave no update on the price talks or the case against four Rio Tinto Ltd. employees who were detained July 5 and formally arrested this week on charges of infringing trade secrets and bribery. Chinese media say they were accused of paying bribes to get confidential information on Chinas negotiating stance in the price talks. The other major miners are BHP Billiton Ltd. and Brazils Vale SA.

Rio agreed with Japanese and South Korean mills to cut prices by 33 percent, but China is holding out for a bigger reduction. China consumes up to 60 percent of annual global iron ore production.

“We hope the major iron ore suppliers should bear in mind the long-term, fundamental interests of the industry itself and the longstanding friendly cooperation with China, and deal with this issue in a fair manner,” Li said.

Beijing is trying to create an elite group of Chinese steelmakers by arranging mergers among midsize producers and shutting down smaller mills. Li said his ministry is working on a new merger plan, though he gave no details.

China has annual production capacity of 660 million tons of steel, while demand is just 470 million tons, according to Li. He said companies are adding new capacity that will expand production by 58 million tons.

“If this trend continues this industry will not have a future,” Li said. “My ministry will not approve any expansion-related projects in the iron and steel industry. I would like to call on the whole industry, all iron and steel producers, not to construct any new projects within three years.”

Li called on steelmakers to cooperate with the China Iron & Steel Association as it negotiates this years ore prices. The government has critized small mills for making their own deals with suppliers.

“They should not negotiate with the suppliers themselves,” Li said. “They should choose one representative to negotiate on behalf of all Chinese iron and steel enterprises to have negotiations with the three major iron ore suppliers. I believe this is reasonable.”

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