** ConocoPhillips Alaska announces plans to cut North Slope production by about 100,000 barrels per day in June.
** ExxonMobil Corp posted a surprise first quarter loss Friday amid an historic decline in global crude prices and said it would slash spending by $10 billion in order to protect its dividend and balance sheet.
** An Iowa congresswoman co-sponsors a bill to issue $500 million in fuel infrastructure grants so higher levels of ethanol and biodiesel could be blended.
** An Ohio coal plant scheduled to be decommissioned later this month burns the last of its coal supplies.
** An Arizona regulator is removed from the ballot for being 92 signatures short of the 6,663 needed to run, with at least 100 ruled invalid due to forgery.
** Peabody’s CEO says a review of the company’s mines could mean identifying some assets to sell in addition to the layoff of 170 workers from its Wyoming mines.
** A candidate for Montana’s Public Service Commission questions state regulators’ decision that additional details on NorthWestern Energy’s plan to buy more of the Colstrip Power Plant are no longer needed.
** Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Tom Udall, are warning the Interior Department against seeking to provide relief from federal royalty payments for oil and gas production on federal lands amid the pandemic.
** Former FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur joined Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy as a distinguished visiting fellow.
** Prominent Trump donor, Dan Eberhart of Canary, one of the nation’s largest independent oil field services companies is urging the president to help his hard-hit sector by lifting tariffs on steel and other manufactured goods. “The impact of such tariffs on the products we rely on has always been significant, but it is now increasingly worrying as our margins shrink exponentially,” he wrote in a Thursday letter to the President.