Moscow, so far, determines the schedules and fees for companies that want to ship oil out of Russia, where prices are still subsidized by the state.

Not so if you're in an industry tasked with, say, shipping cars or oil from one hemisphere to another.

Finally, every time you ship oil on water, there is a risk of a spill (Exxon Valdez).

Shipping oil by supertanker from countries not friendly to us is a larger threat to our energy needs as well as our economy.

And I believe they will, until we stop trying to ship oil out of the Middle East.

But it is the Market that drives Exxon and its competitors to ship oil in very large tankers.

Chief among them is whether the companies drilling in Kazakhstan would ship oil through the line or send it north and west through Russia.

The probability that Iran would actually cut off the strait is limited by its own need to ship oil through the passage, military analysts say.

President Bush warned Baghdad not to try to ship oil through an undeclared naval blockade.

Launched in 1973, she worked various routes shipping crude oil from the middle east gulf.