U.S. Seeks to Open Flow of Soviet Oil : Trade: The commerce secretary and a group of corporate executives will visit next week to offer American expertise.

Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher said today that he and a group of corporate chief executive officers will tour the Soviet Union next week to discuss bolstering that country’s lagging oil production and improving trade.

“There’s a tremendous amount to be done,” Mosbacher said at a news briefing. “They’re the biggest oil producer in the world.

“There are a lot of new methodologies and a lot of new equipment that’s been developed in this country over the last decade,” he said.

Soviet oil production has been paralyzed by aging equipment and a choking bureaucracy. But the United States believes that it can tap a new source of energy if it provides the Soviets with a mix of management advice, hardware and pointers on drilling techniques.

“They’re producing all they can now,” Mosbacher said. “There’s a good chance some of the (U.S.) group might be going to the oil fields.”

Fifteen influential business executives are to make the trip, which starts Saturday and includes a visit to Helsinki, Finland, to meet President Bush after his summit with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Among the 15 are Lodwrick Cook, chairman of Atlantic Richfield Co.; James Kinnear, president of Texaco Inc., and Chesley Pruet, president of Pruet Oil Co. of El Dorado, Ark.

Mosbacher said the trip was being planned before Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, the seizure of the sheikdom’s oil fields and the dramatic increase in world petroleum prices.

He also insisted that promises of technical and economic aid to the Soviets are not a “quid pro quo” for their cooperation in the U.N.-sanctioned blockade of Iraq.