A Look at What’s in Store for Business and Workers : It won’t be dull, that’s for sure. The new year will see dramatic changes for U.S. industry and the American worker. Business writers at The Times polled experts on what is likely to happen in 1989. Here is their report. : ENERGY

Coming off a surprisingly profitable year, the oil and gas industry enters 1989 with encouraging prospects for the world price of oil and signs of new respect for the Oil Patch emanating from the Bush White House.

But the industry faces the threat of a big increase in the federal gasoline tax, and the oil markets remain glutted and volatile despite November’s potentially important production-cutting accord by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

If OPEC holds together, analysts say oil prices could rise to $17 by later this year, a big gain from the $13-$15 which prevailed before the cartel acted. But some experts see a sharp fall in prices this winter before recovery in the spring.

Higher crude oil prices and a stiffer gasoline tax would both cut into profits at the retail end of the oil industry and in chemical subsidiaries, whose earnings lately have more than offset losses in oil production for those companies active in both ends of the business. But a rise in crude prices would be an unmixed blessing for hard-pressed independent oilmen, as would the package of tax relief advocated for the independents by ex-oilman George Bush.