October 6, 1982

Tenneco Inc., a pipeline company, and two major natural gas producers have agreed to pay $40 million in penalties for improper pricing policies before 1975, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced today. The money will go to consumers. The companies were charged with having improperly diverted gas from interstate transmission, which was subject to Federal price controls, to intrastate markets, which were exempt from controls. Tenneco, without admitting or denying the allegations, agreed to pay $23 million in refunds, to be passed to the interstate customers of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, a division of Tenneco.

France's automobile makers, long considered the most dynamic of the country's manufacturers and widely respected abroad for their technological skill, are in trouble. Faced with stagnant world demand and stepped-up competition from abroad, especially Japan, the privately-owned Peugeot-Citroen group and the nationalized Renault see their market shares falling and their profits melting away. Peugeot-Citroen has reported that its British subsidiary had a first-half loss equivalent to $68 million, a result sure to help bring about the ''substantial'' loss for the year that the group's chairman, Jean-Paul Parayre, recently warned shareholders to expect. String of Losses This year's red ink follows a loss of $277 million in 1981 and one of $208 million in 1980, converting the French franc at its current rate. The losses reflect in part the difficulty the group has experienced in integrating its three elements, the once independent Peugeot and Citroen car companies, which merged in 1974, and Chrsyler's old European subsidiaries, which were brought into the fold in 1978 and rechristened Talbot.

What's in a name? Well, maybe billions of dollars, according to some companies in the telephone equipment business. An intense behind-the-scenes debate is being waged over the name ''Bell,'' synonymous in some minds with power and success in the telephone game. The overall Bell System had revenues of more than $50 billion last year, including $13 billion for the Western Electric equipment subsidiary alone.

At 11:37 P.M. on Jan. 3, 1981, two Salvadoran National Guardsmen stepped into the Salon Las Americas, the restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel in San Salvador, and moved quickly toward a rear table where three men sat. One of the Guardsmen lifted a .45-caliber submachine gun with silencer and began firing while the second pulled the trigger on his 9-millimeter submachine gun. The three men at the table - two Americans working for the A.F.L.- C.I.O. and a Salvadoran union leader who headed a land redistribution program - were killed but their deaths were unresolved until last week. Today, in response to what they called the failure of El Salvador's legal authorities to prosecute the case in full, United States labor officials divulged details of the case for the first time.

The City Planning Commission has unanimously approved a proposal to build a new city jail adjacent to the lower Manhattan civic center, on the western edge of Chinatown. The city's Correction Department, under a court order to reduce overcrowding in its jails, announced last year that it planned to build a 500-bed detention center on a vacant block bounded by Centre, Baxter, Walker and White Streets. This jail would be near the Men's House of Detention - known as the Tombs - which is to reopen next spring with 426 beds. The plan also calls for the construction of a 126-bed juvenile detention center on top of the new jail.