71.   Oil executives here and government officials scoff.

72.   Several American oil executives say that the business climate in the African nation, after years of problems, is promising.

73.   She had become a professional portrait painter when her husband, a banker, author, journalist and eventually an oil company executive, suggested she write a novel.

74.   She still lives with her mother in the Detroit suburb where she trains and sees her father, a Texas oil executive, on weekends.

75.   She was particularly proud of her membership in the Twenty-Five Year Club, an organization of top oil company executives.

76.   Soviet engineers, however, took existing onshore technology and forced it into an alien setting, according to western oil executives.

77.   Some oil company executives are almost alarmist about the coming oil crunch.

78.   Some oil executives, who have been struggling with the byzantine politics of oil for years here, were more skeptical.

79.   Still, various details have led analysts, oil executives, creditors and Chernogorneft insiders to believe that Tyumen is involved in behind-the-scenes moves.

80.   Stoking suspicions of environmentalists is the fact that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are both former oil executives.