RUSSIA - Oct. 2 - US To Take Delivery Of Russian Oil.

Moscow and Washington officials say Washington will for the first time take delivery of Russian oil for its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. A shipment of about 300,000 barrels from Tyumen Oil is to arrive next week. The delivery symbolises growing energy ties between Moscow and Washington. The ties are being strengthened this week at the first US-Russia Commercial Energy Summit in Houston, where Moscow and Washington cabinet ministers are meeting executives of more than 100 oil companies. In Houston on Oct. 2 Keith Rowden, an energy official at PwC, the professional services firm, said the announcement "demonstrates the mutual interest in the two countries in improving the level of partnership". The meeting, he said, was "useful in letting both sides see their commonality of interests".

(The US administration is pushing hard to fill the strategic reserve to capacity. Volatile oil prices, which could soar with an attack on Iraq, already threaten to sink any economic recovery. In Nov. 2001, US Pres. Bush ordered the Department of Energy to fill the reserve to its 700m barrel capacity by 2005. It now stands at more than 586m barrels, the highest it has been since 1994. Most of the oil in the US reserve has been acquired from abroad. The first delivery was 412,000 barrels of Saudi Arabian light crude in 1977. Mexico accounts for about 40% of the supply. In August Kansas City-based Koch Supply and Trading won a bid to supply oil to the petroleum reserve. It will provide 8m barrels, of which the Russian oil is a part).