I am trying to run a bash script as root to test/obtain the $ORACLE_HOME environment variable under the oracle user's profile.

Anyone know of a good way to script that?

I tried using sudo su - oracle "echo $ORACLE_HOME" but that doesn't work.

Try Grep'ing the variable from there .bashrc script instead.
cat /home/oracle/.bashrc | grep ORACLE_HOME | cut -d"=" -f2

I've not tested this but what I'm trying to do would be
cat the Oracle users .bashrc file
Look for a string with ORACLE_HOME then strip of the fist part of the script so only get the path
so in the .bashrc file it might have some thing like export ORACLE_HOME=/some/path
to Put this all into a variable to use in your script try this:

MyOracleHome=`cat /home/oracle/.bashrc | grep ORACLE_HOME | cut -d"=" -f2`

As I say not tested, but hopefully might point you in the right direction, let me know how you go...

Something like 'sudo su -l oracle -c env|grep HOME'?

Thanks unSpawn, that did the trick. Anyone know why echo doesn't work? Just curious...

If you are root, you don't need sudo, just su -. Also, re echo, you need the -c flag to tell it its a cmd...

su in a script stops the script. sudo su - allows a script to execute a command and continue running. Even with the -c command, echo doesn't work.