Daily News from New York, New York • 33

TTT 33 onsnimess itb By JOEL SAPPELL 40 ARABIAN LIGHT MARKER CRUDE A I Dottars per barrel. Rotterdam spot marfcat mm. mm; added 16 to 18 cents a gallon to the refiner's cost, Ross said. As of April 8, the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $1.35.71, compared with $1.20.01 for the same period last year. As drivers continue to conserve and the glut grows, oil company earnings have sagged and their stocks have plummeted about 30 this year.

In midday trading today, oil company stocks were up fractionally overall. The oil glut's impact is clearly apparent in spot market oil prices oil that is not tied to contracts. The current price for spot market crude is $36 a barrel. Last November it was $40. Another reflection of the growing glut is Atlantic Richfield decision to terminate supply contracts for 60,000 barrels of crude a day from Nigeria.

Arco said yesterday the price between $40.40 to $41 a barrel was too high. See OIL Page 43 Spot price falls $4perbarrer are unless oil supplies are interrupted or consumers stop conserving. While prices won't drop more than a few cents at most, the oil glut is at least preventing them from soaring. "I think we've seen the worst of the big increases," Randol said. A "temporary respite," is how Gary Ross, director of research for Petroleum Industry Research Associates, described it today.

Ross said refiners may cut back on the amount of gasoline they produce to drive the price up in an effort to recover increased costs. The OPEC crude price increase imposed last December, and President Reagan's decontrol order in January, have jointly Despite an increasing worldwide oil glut, consumers will get little, if any, relief at the gas pump, oil analysts said today. With an estimated oil surplus of 2.5 million barrels a day, gasoline prices should drop that is, if normal supply and demand conditions were at work. But because of oil price decontrol and cost hikes by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, refiners are caught in a "classic profit squeeze," said William Randol, senior oil analyst for Salomon Brothers. In other words, Randol said, U.S.

refiners can't pass on their increased costs because of the oil glut. But at the same time they can't drop prices either because of their own cost increases. What this squeeze means is that gas prices will remain about where they 7 I i i i i I I I I I I I I I i I 1 I I i i I I I I I I I I 1979 1980 SOURCE Pwlretomn Hcfcyc Wtly Engov Pc BOB JUFFRAS DAILY NEWS Detroit sales slump 1 2 but Chrysler surges 33 Shape of things to come: oval tower on Third Ave. By JAMES A. WHITE By RANDY SMITH Chrysler replaced its rebate program with an offer of $50 to customers who test-drive a new Chrysler vehicle, then buy a comparable vehicle from Chrysler or a competitor.

No expiration date was announced for the offer. Chrysler has sold 232,073 cars so far in 1981, up 15 from 204,121 by the same time last year. GM's sales are down 7.5 for the year while Ford's are off 9.4. Uncertainty cuts 4 points off Dow By GERALD M. CONNORS Stocks sagged for the second straight session in active trading today as investors puzzled over the direction of interest rates and the near-term course of the economy.

The Dow Jones industrials lost 4.06 to 989.10. Turnover on the New York Exchange reached 48.4 million shares with 931 issues lower and 553 higher. News that retail sales nudged 0.1 higher in March triggered a surge in bond prices and a corresponding drop See MARKET Page 34 Controversial architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee are designing an oval-shaped office tower at 53d St. and Third Ave. for Texas developer Gerald Hines that may herald a new generation of midtown buildings.

Its curving sides would be the only break in Third's squared-off corridor of boxy, functional structures designed in the "modern" style, Burgee told the Daily News. Hines plans a office tower with 34 stories costing upwards of $40 million on the site across from Citicorp Center, which he acquired last December from Citibank for a record price of more than $1,000 a square foot Ground-breaking isn't expected for 18 months because tenants still living there have to be relocated. A Hines spokesman called the JohnsonBurgee design "pleasing," but said Hines might want to "look at others which may be better." IT WAS JOHNSON and Burgee Early April car sales of the Big Three U.S. auto makers slumped 12 as Detroit's rebate programs were phased out, but Chrysler the only producer posting higher sales on the year, added to its gains with a 33 increase in the latest period. Sales reports today showed General Motors Corp.

suffered a 23 plunge in the April 1 to 10 period, as the No. 1 auto maker was hardest hit by the end of rebates. Unlike Chrysler and Ford Motor GM offered rebates did not extend to cars now being shipped. Ford sales rose 4.8. Overall sales for the Big Three producers totaled 155,088 cars against 176,060 for the comparable 1980 period.

Including estimated sales for American Motors Corp. and Volkswagen of America, analyst David Healy of Drexel Burnham Lambert said the industry's domestic sales in early April were running at a 6.02 million annual rate. "That's not good but better than late March when rebates were being phased out and sales were dropping like a stone," said Healy. Chrysler, Ford and GM each had a customer rebate program in effect for the first four or five days of the month. Texas developer Gerald Hines who broke the "modern" mold here with their infamous "post-modern" design for the armoire-style headquarters at Madison and 56th, known as the Chippendale building, now under construction.

See NINES Page 37 Cancer scare: Coffee maker fights back By BERNICE KANNER Marketing Columnist a want to sweep it under the rug," he said in a phone interview. "The study raises serious questions and we wanted to present the other side of the coin." Black, the ads note, has had "considerable practical experience in medical research," having established the Parkinson's Disease Foundation at the Columbia University Medical Center in 1957. He advises coffee drinkers to consider some facts "before you give up one -of life's pleasures a good cup of coffee." Animals and children have cancer of the pancreas, but they don't drink coffee, he says, adding that the disease "is no more prevalent in countries where the people drink a lot of coffee than in countries with a low per-capita consumption of coffee." In some of these same arguments were raised by many of the nation's science writers in their follow-up reports which were generally critical of the controversial study by the Harvard School of Public Health published in the New England Journal of Medicine. See COFFEE Page 36 While most of the nation's coffee makers dove for cover in response to the recent report linking coffee to pancreatic cancer, Chock full o' Nuts has counterattacked. The New York-based company, the nation's fourth largest coffee marketer, ran an open letter from its 78-year-old chairman, William Black, in newspapers around the country last Thursday and Friday flatly challenging the validity of the study.

More than 100 million people in the United States drink coffee each day, making the brew at last count a $5.6 billion industry. Chock full o' Nuts developed the ad in-house and is spending around $100,000 to print it in over 25 newspapers, President Charles Haynsworth said. Although coffee sales have not been affected by the medical report, "we didn't Chock full Chairman William Black.