The heating oil program was unveiled in 2005 in poor urban areas of Massachusetts and New York.
PAGE C1 Inquiry in U.S. Oil Program The Justice Department is investigating Interior Department employees involved in a multibillion-dollar oil-trading program.
Virtually all had been financed by funds from Petrocaribe, an oil program created by the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez.
The Iraqis and United Nations officials who are running the oil program gave conflicting accounts about where the dispute over the price of Iraqi oil stood.
Nearby Kenya is fast-tracking its own oil program, and most industry watchers expect that the Kenyans will start production ahead of Uganda.
"The heating oil program has been suspended until further notice," Joseph P. Kennedy II, the president of Citizens Energy, said in a statement.
The suspension of the heating oil program follows a decision to tighten currency controls in an attempt to stanch the flow of dollars leaving the country.
Australian Securities and Investments Commission counsel Norman O'Bryan also read emails from UN officials who, in 2000, were becoming concerned the UN's Food For Oil program was being subverted.
But Andrew Logan, director of the oil program at Ceres, a coalition of institutional investors and environmentalists, said, "boards tend to strongly consider proposals that get significant support".
Even if Mr. Chávez's supporters remain in control, a rocky economy and stagnant oil production could ultimately make it hard to keep the oil program going at present levels.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor said that an investigating magistrate, Serge Tournaire, had placed the company under formal investigation — one step short of indictment — on Feb. 22 on suspicion of bribery, complicity in corrupting foreign officials and influence-peddling as part of the oil program.
