mod_php and oci8

I have apache in my /etc/init.d to load on startup. Problem is, my php 
page uses oci to connect to an oracle db. What happens is that I get an 
oci_open_server Error. However, when I do /etc/init.d/apache restart, 
this works fine.

I'm guessing that my startup script isn't reading ORACLE_HOME. How do I 
get it to read ORACLE_HOME on startup?

Thanks,
Arafat Mohamed