OIL RELEASE MAY CUT GAS PRICES, SAYS BP EXEC.

Byline: Pam Park Staff Writer

Gas prices may back off, at least temporarily, as a result of President Clinton's decision to release some 30 million gallons of the United States' oil reserves, John Browne, Group Chief Executive of BP Amoco, said Friday at his first local press conference since the company's takeover of Los Angeles-based Atlantic Richfield Co. last spring.

``It may well take some heat out of the market. We'll have to wait and see,'' Browne said.

Crude oil prices are at a 10-year high, and Californians are paying more for gasoline than they have in nearly two decades.

Everyone seems to be looking for someone to blame. World leaders have pushed OPEC to pump more oil to relieve price pressures. Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries blame everything from speculation to slow refineries to high gas taxes in industrialized countries. Some experts say not only is refinery capacity insufficient, there are not enough tankers available to deliver the oil to the United States even if OPEC pumps it.

World crude oil stocks are lower than they once were, but they still exist, Browne said. He estimated global stock at about 50 days' supply.

BP is definitely not speculating in oil, Browne said. Supply decisions are mostly made by a subset of OPEC members, according to Browne.

``Everyone else is producing flat out,'' he said.

BP currently plans to expand its production of crude oil by 5 percent per year, and its natural gas production by twice that amount, Browne said.

Most of California's special clean-burning gasoline is refined in California. BP will maintain capacity at its Carson refinery and look at how to expand its output, but it's unlikely BP or any company will try to build a new refinery here because of the difficulty and expense of meeting regulations, he said.

The British Petroleum chief was in town to announce the awarding of $20 million in grants to two California universities to study ways to more efficiently convert methane, a component of natural gas, to useful liquid fuels and chemicals.

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the University of California at Berkeley, each will receive $1 million per year for methane use research.