** The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced $17.9 million in funding for four research and development projects to scale up American manufacturing of flow battery and long-duration storage systems.
** Ford just announced it’s going to dump boatloads of money into Tennessee and Kentucky to create a couple of mega sites for electric vehicle production. In clearer terms, Ford and SK Innovation are investing $11.4 billion in a couple of massive projects in these states, all with EV production in mind.
** NOV Inc. announced Scott K. Duff Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer, notified the Company of his intention to retire Nov. 1, 2021 and be succeeded by Christy H. Novak as Vice President, Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer.
** Houston-based Hilcorp, the largest oil and gas producer in Louisiana, with more than 630 producing wells is said to be considering the acquisition of Phillips 66’s Alliance refinery.
** Ukraine and Hungary summoned one another’s ambassadors on Tuesday in a growing row over Budapest’s signing of a new long-term gas deal with Russia, which Kyiv regards as a threat to its national security.
** John Arnold, the billionaire philanthropist who made his fortune betting on natural gas prices, says the energy crisis in Europe should serve as a cautionary tale for the U.S. about transitioning away from fossil fuels too quickly.
** A group of U.S. Democratic lawmakers called on President Joe Biden to halt a plan to slash the amount of biofuels that oil refiners must blend into their fuel, according to a letter dated Monday.
** Seven Venezuelan oil workers have been detained by military counterintelligence officers following an outage at a unit of state oil company PDVSA’s 310,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Cardon refinery, according to eight sources familiar with the matter.
** A “rusty colored” liquid from a U.S. Steel plant in Indiana spilled into Lake Michigan, forcing a national park to close beaches for swimming and a water treatment facility to shut down.
** The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced it has achieved its summer goal of signing up at least 125 communities for the Solar Automated Permit Processing (SolarAPP+) tool—a free, DOE-developed web-based platform that allows local governments to instantly approve residential solar installation permits.
** SoCalGas agrees to pay $1.8 billion to settle litigation stemming from the 2016 Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility blowout, the largest methane leak in U.S. history.
** Hawaii’s attorney general files a brief supporting city and county lawsuits alleging fossil fuel companies misled the public about their products’ climate-harming effects.
