Business

Valero Energy Corp.'s McKee refinery has begun processing crude oil again, Valero spokesman Bill Day said Monday. The plant executed an emergency shutdown Feb. 16 after a fire and explosion caused by a propane leak.

Day said the process of re-commissioning the refinery may take several days.

Valero still expects to process 85,000 barrels a day — half the plant's capacity — by the end this month. A return to full production isn't likely this year, Valero has said. The plant is in Sunray, about 60 miles north of Amarillo.

S.A. man faces suit over investment

A San Antonio man, Andrew DeVries, has been named in a lawsuit by an Ohio retiree who alleges that he lost $67,000 of his retirement savings when he invested in a company DeVries was associated with.

Glenn Drago of Ohio filed suit against DeVries and Sulja Brothers Building Materials Limited in U.S. District Court in Florida in January, saying that he invested based on false statements by the company.

The lawsuit followed action by the Ontario Securities Commission, which suspended trading in Sulja's stock in December and, after a March 21 hearing, left the order in place. Besides DeVries, the suit names Sulja's former CEO, Petar Vucicevich, and its current CEO, Steve Sulja.

The lawsuit "is just plain silliness," said Richard Markle, a Houston lawyer for DeVries, Vucicevich, Sulja and the company. "They grabbed stuff from the Ontario Securities Commission, which hasn't arrived at a conclusion and has never said my clients have done anything wrong."

AT&T call center to create 500 jobs

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — AT&T Inc. plans to build a call center in southern Indiana that will create more than 500 jobs, the company and government officials said Monday.

The San Antonio-based company will invest more than $22 million and build a 75,000-square-foot building to provide support for business customers of its wireless services, according to the Indiana Economic Development Corp.

Interest rates dip in T-bill auction

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department auctioned $14 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 4.865 percent, down from 4.880 percent last week. Another $12 billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 4.865 percent, the same as the three-month rate.

The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,877.02, while a six-month bill sold for $9,754.05.

Royalty board rejects Internet radio appeal

LAS VEGAS — Internet radio broadcasters were dealt a setback Monday when a panel of copyright judges threw out requests to reconsider a ruling that hiked the royalties they must pay to record companies and artists.

The Copyright Royalty Board judges denied all motions for rehearing and declined to postpone a May 15 deadline by which the royalties will have to be collected.

The board did allow webcasters to calculate fees by average listening hours, as they had been, as opposed to the new system of charging a royalty each time every song is heard by an online listener. That exemption counts for last year and this year. After that, the new per-song, per-listener fee structure goes into effect.

— From staff and wire reports