The analysis concluded that the deepening would allow larger cargo ships and tankers to travel up the river, saving money on freight costs.

The last Lake Tanker was retired from service in 1953, when the channel from Lake Maracaibo to the sea was finally dredged and deepened to allow ocean-going tankers to enter the lake and pipelines from the lake were constructed to deep water ports in the Paraguana Peninsula.

For that reason, Energy officials asked the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors to allow double-hull tankers to transport output above 20,000 barrels from a processing plant at the coastal town of Gaviota, near Point Arguello, down the coast to Chevron's Los Angeles refineries.

Kuwaiti Request Being Studied At the same time, the Chinese Foreign Ministry acknowledged that Kuwait had asked China to consider allowing Kuwaiti tankers to be registered under the Chinese flag.

The corps says a deeper channel will allow more heavily laden tankers to float up the river, leaving less oil to be transferred at sea and translating into millions of dollars in savings.

An offshore fueling terminal began operation in September 1967, allowing commercial tankers to unload fuel oil and aviation gas without docking at the busy fuel pier.

It is not known whether the Iranians enriching themselves by allowing tankers to use their territorial waters are backed by the government in any way.

A fuel jetty was constructed, allowing tankers to discharge into a pipeline which ran over a catwalk to the storage tanks.

But Mr. Adler of the Natural Resources Defense Council said the concessions appear at the moment to be coming from House negotiators, who are offering more lenient schedules that would allow tankers with single hulls to operate well into the next century.

The reasons he cited for the Department of the Navy opposing the rule were: * Allowing tankers built with construction-differential subsidy to repay that subsidy to the Government and enter the domestic tanker trade has had a stifling effect on the domestic tanker trade since 1978.