Energy news in brief

** Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Monday urged the rejection of shareholder proposals that annual reports be produced about its efforts to address climate change and promote diversity and inclusion. The proposals were disclosed in Berkshire’s annual proxy filing, ahead of the Omaha, Nebraska-based company’s scheduled May 1 annual meeting.

** Halliburton Company announced it awarded a multimillion dollar software grant to Malaysian Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS to support the education and development of students pursuing careers in the oil and gas industry.

** Renewable Energy Group, Inc. in Iowa announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering of 5,000,000 shares of its common stock at a public offering price of $67.00 per share. The size of the offering was upsized from 4,500,000 shares to 5,000,000 shares.

** Federal and state officials probe a whistleblower’s allegations that a pipeline to serve an ethane cracker plant in western Pennsylvania is installed with improper corrosion protections.

** A 5,000-acre solar project is scheduled to come online and provide local tax revenue as a major coal plant is retired in northwestern Indiana.

** FirstEnergy plans to add two members to its board of directors who are backed by activist investor Carl Icahn.

** United Auto Workers officials criticize Ford over plans to build electric vehicles at a Mexico plant rather than in Ohio. 

** North Dakota expects to collect about $1 billion more in oil taxes over the next two-year budget cycle than what lawmakers forecasted just two months ago. 

** Rioters who trashed file cabinets in a Senate office on Jan. 6 may have inadvertently derailed three Trump administration pollution rules, including a widely criticized policy for aircraft emissions.

** The Biden Administration faces a dilemma as evidence builds of human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang region, which supplies half of the world’s supply of polysilicon, a key ingredient in solar panels.

** Louisiana officials say the state’s oil and gas industry is in danger after President Joe Biden cancels a March oil lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico.