Section B · Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, December 2, 1998
Nation/World
Exxon and Mobil tie the knot
Oil industry giants combine into largest company in world
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Exxon agreed yesterday to buy Mobil for a record $77.2 billion, a corporate marriage that would reunite two of the biggest pieces of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil empire and create the world's largest company.
The combination of the nation's two biggest oil and gas companies will be called Exxon Mobil Corp. and would vault past Royal Dutch Shell Group as the No.1 company in the energy business. It also would surpass General Motors Corp. as the
largest company of any kind in the world, with $203 billion in combined revenue last year.
The deal comes as oil companies are struggling with a deep slump in prices that is not expected to turn around for years. Exxon and Mobil expect $2.8 billion in savings by merging, but did not mention any job cuts in a statement announcing the deal.
Analysts expect thousands of employees will lose their jobs, with estimates running as high as 20,000 or 16 percent of the companies combined work force of 123,000.
"This merger will enhance our ability to be an effective global competitor in a volatile world economy and in an industry that is more and more competitive," the companies said in a statement.
The Exxon-Mobil deal tops British
Petroleum's planned $58.5 billion purchase of Amoco Corp. as the largest industrial merger and, at current stock prices, outranks Bell Atlantic Corp.'s $72 billion merger with GTE Corp. and the $70 billion union of SBC Communications Inc. and Ameritech Corp.
The deal brings together two of the biggest pieces of Rockefeller's Standard Oil trust, the oil monopoly broken up by the federal government in 1911. Mobil is the former Standard Oil of New York, while Exxon was once Standard Oil of New Jersey.
Reports of the deal surfaced last week,confirming expectations that the oil industry's consolidation would intensify as companies seek cost savings as a way to boost profits amid low oil prices. The dim price projections were augmented by OPEC oil ministers' inability to
agree on ways to stem the price declines at their year-end meeting.
Exxon and Mobil will retain both of their well-known brand names, although analysts expect government regulators to force the companies to sell off numerous gas stations and refineries to satisfy antitrust concerns.
The two companies have about 48,500 gas stations worldwide, roughly a third in the United States, and exploration and production operations worldwide.
Even though Exxon Mobil would rank as the world's biggest oil company, most analysts feel the industry is competitive enough that concerns about market dominance will not be strong enough for regulators to kill the deal.
Democrats fume about subpoenas for Clinton inquiry
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — House impeachment investigators yesterday approved subpoenas to obtain evidence about President Clinton's campaign fund raising over the sharp objections of Democrats.
House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt charged that chaos is reigning in the impeachment probe.
In the midst of a hearing carefully planned to underscore the seriousness of perjury, the Judiciary Committee voted 20-15 along party lines to subpoena evidence from the Justice Department investigation of fund raising in Clinton's 1996 campaign.
"It's my worry that this is becoming an impaction inquiry in search of a high crime," said the panel's senior Democrat, John Conyers of Michigan.
Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said he still hoped to wrap up the inquiry by the end of the month but felt dutybound to explore anything else that comes to their attention, including Justice Department internal memos that may point to wrongdoing by the president.
Committee officials said lawyers for the Republican majority were making a second attempt yesterday to persuade
Hyde: Did not address purpose of new supoenas.
a judge to permit the Justice Department to provide one of the subpoenaed memos.
Paul McNulty, a committee representative, said U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson turned down a similar request Friday on grounds the committee did not demonstrate a need for the document.
which contains secret grand jury material and recommends an independent counsel to investigate fund raising.
As Democrats objected to the belated
expansion of the impeachment inquiry, Republicans questioned two women prosecuted for lying in sex cases as they explored whether Clinton should be held to the same standard.
"Because a president is not a king, he or she must abide by the same laws as the rest of us," Barbara Battalino told the Judiciary Committee, who is serving a home detention sentence after pleading guilty in a case in which she lied about a sexual relationship.
The carefully scripted hearing came as the committee, just a week before a planned vote on impeachment articles against Clinton, moved to obtain evidence from the Justice Department investigation of fund-raising abuses in Clinton's 1996 campaign. Conyers said
that campaign finance has no relationship to the sex-and-lies report submitted to Congress by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
Democrats aired several complaints at the hearing. Conyers demanding that Clinton and his colleagues be told what the specific articles of impeachment will be.
Hyde said the purpose of the hearing was to explore whether Clinton should be treated the same as other citizens convicted of perjury.
Hyde's opening statement didn't address the abrupt decision Monday night to seek to subpoena secret Clinton administration memos urging Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the president's 1996 campaign.
"The committee has received information which suggests that the campaign finance abuse memos may contain allegations of criminal wrongdoing by the president," McNulty said Monday. "The committee is duty-bound to investigate that information."
Federal auditors recommend fines for '96 political ads
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Federal Election Commission auditors recommended today that President Clinton's campaign repay $7 million in taxpayer assistance it received during the 1996 election, and said his Repub<sup>12</sup>
Clinton: Commission recommends $7 million fine.
can challenger Bob Dole should repay $17.7 million.
The auditors alleged both candidates' campaigns illegally coordinated and benefited from issue advertisements run by their political parties.
The commission, divided among three Democratic and Republican appointees, will review the findings
tomorrow and can accept, reject or alter the repayment figures.
The staff auditors said they concluded that Clinton and Dole illegally coordinated supposedly independent ads run by their parties during the 1996 campaign and in doing
so exceeded the spending limits the two candidates agreed to when they accepted taxpayer assistance for the election.
Dole: Commission recommends $17.7 million fine.
The auditors said that 37 DNC ads clearly identified President Clinton and "appeared to contain electioneering messages."
The Justice Department is currently in the midst of a 90-day inquiry into whether the FEC allegations warrant the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the Clinton campaign. A decision on the recommendation is due next week.
Hurricane's death toll not as high as reported
Governor may have inflated region's count
The Associated Press
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras announced yesterday that it suspended a governor for inflating her region's death toll from Hurricane Mitch. It also lowered its official death count by 1,350 people.
The new death toll of 5,657 was compiled after the government sent teams to verify reports from regions across Honduras, the Interior Secretariat said yesterday.
The governor, Lucila Esperanza Barahona de Castro of the Santa Barbara region in remote northwestern Honduras, was suspended after investigators could verify only 282 of the 1,159 deaths reported in her area.
Authorities said that the suspension was standard procedure during an inquiry.
Kyle Ramsey/KANSAN
Barahona told The Associated Press she couldn't have falsified the numbers because she didn't even give a death toll to the federal government.
"I don't know what source gave them the numbers," she said yesterday.
In addition to the 5,657 dead, Honduras said it had verified 8,058 missing, 12,272 injured and 1.4 million
homeless throughout the country
Aid workers and journalists began questioning Honduras' estimated death toll after figures jumped drastically Nov. 2, the same day that news broke of a landslide in Nicaragua that covered two villages and killed up to 2,000 people.
That day, Honduras' official death toll jumped from 600 to 5,000. Later, authorities raised the figure to 6,400, then last week to 7,007.
Luis Torres, spokesman for the committee overseeing the relief effort, told The Associated Press that "all the information is being verified by the mayors' offices, the army, the police, public and private rescue groups and the authorities of the 18 provinces of the country."
The revised figure from Honduras lowers the overall death toll in Central America from Hurricane Mitch to 9,071.
Meanwhile, Honduras' legislature restored its bill of rights, which was suspended Nov. 2 when flooding from Mitch sparked looting and banditry, and ended an 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. Lawmakers said the emergency had been overcome.
The government also reversed its explanation for a helicopter crash that killed the overwhelmingly popular mayor of the capital, Cesar Castellanos, a 50-year-old neurosurgeon who was considered the top candidate to become Honduras' next president.
Officials had blamed mechanical failure, but said yesterday human error caused the crash, which occurred while Castellanos was surveying hurricane damage.
"Pilot Jose Miranda caused the tragedy when he made an unplanned maneuver, which caused the craft the crash into high tension cables and fall to the ground," Judge Dagoberto Aspra said yesterday.
He spoke after listening to audiotapes of communications between the pilot and the control tower.
Miranda was also killed in the crash.
Byron Jose, 13, holds his head while sitting on the ruins of a neighbor's house in La Nueva Esperanza, Tegucigalpa 15 days after the tragic landslide caused by Hurricane Mitch. Jose was trapped under mud and debris before he was pulled to safety. AFP Photo
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