** West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin rejected the way his party has approached climate change and China amid the gridlock over President Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan. He pointed out China has 3,000 coal plants while the US has 500. “My environmental friends will make you believe…that the 500 are polluting the whole world,” Manchin said. “They’re just not being accurate.”
** Shell said on Friday it had restarted production at its offshore Mars and Ursa in the Gulf of Mexico and began exporting oil and gas through a transfer facility, which was shut due to damage from Hurricane Ida.
** North Dakota regulators grant temporary approval for a 2.6-mile gas pipeline that has operated without a permit since 2014 and connects a gas processing plant with a major export pipeline.
** Ithaca, the upstate New York city of about 30,000, known for Cornell University and the natural beauty of its gorges, will be the first in the country to try to decarbonize every last one of its buildings by switching to electric power.
** The executive board chairman at Energy Transfer, which built the Dakota Access pipeline, says it is “insanity” to suggest net zero emission targets will eliminate the use of oil and gas.
** A Canadian official says the country would respond “appropriately” to proposed U.S. tax credits for electric vehicles built in America, which he says would violate trade agreements and harm workers.
** Minnesota expands its energy assistance program to more customers ahead of an anticipated spike in home heating costs.
** The cost of two nuclear reactors being built at Plant Vogtle in Georgia escalates to $28.5 billion, more than twice the original price tag, and the plant’s other owners argue Georgia Power has tripped an agreement to pay a larger share of the ongoing overruns.
** Southern Co. announces it will close 55% of its coal fleet by the end of the decade, including units at the nation’s two largest coal-fired power plants and one of the last coal generators in Mississippi.
** A shortage of nitrogen fertilizer is getting so bad that farmers won’t be able to get what they need for their fields in the near future. That’s according to executives at CF Industries Holdings Inc., owner of the world’s largest nitrogen facility, who spoke on an earnings call Thursday.
** Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said cargo ships in California could reroute to Texas ports in less than two weeks. Abbott said Texas could get goods out quicker and cheaper than California, where ports are jammed.
** New Mexico’s two Democrat U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan continued their pursuit of hydrogen to curb carbon emissions from energy generation, joining in the introduction of a package of bills to support the implementation of hydrogen power in the U.S.
** Federal officials say a drone found near a Pennsylvania substation in summer 2020 was the first known case of a “modified unmanned aircraft system likely being used in the United States to specifically target energy infrastructure.”
WORLD
** Large fires blaze near a petrol station following a massive explosion in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown that has reportedly killed 92 people. According to witnesses, the blast happened when a fuel tanker caught fire at a petrol station after a road accident. The flames then spread, burning people in cars and on roads nearby.
** Vietnam was seeking more information Thursday about a Vietnamese oil tanker that was seized at gunpoint last month by Iranian soldiers in the Gulf of Oman, while vowing to ensure the safety and humane treatment of the ship’s crew members.
** OPEC+ ignored demands for a bigger oil-production increase, instead blaming their customers’ economic woes on soaring prices of natural gas and coal. “Oil is not the problem,” Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told reporters after a meeting on Thursday, when the cartel emphatically rejected President Joe Biden’s request to quicken the pace of its supply hikes.
** Britain’s NatWest says it won’t lend to any new customers operating coal-fired power plants. Chief Executive Alison Rose says it will phase out all lending to coal in the UK by 2024, and globally by 2030.