** As he tries to wrangle environmental support abroad, President Joe Biden faces a new climate challenge in Washington, where the Supreme Court could upend the EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions under a long-standing air pollution law reports Roll Call.
** Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is privately questioning a proposed fee on methane emissions targeting oil and gas companies, people familiar with the matter tell Axios. Her potential opposition will upset environmental groups and lawmakers like Sen. Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware.
** The chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York, issued subpoenas Tuesday to top executives of ExxonMobil, Chevron and other oil giants, charging that the companies have not turned over documents needed by the committee to investigate allegations that the oil industry concealed evidence about the dangers of global warming.
** Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, warned Tuesday that too narrow a focus on the climate-change advances and misdeeds of public companies could force more fossil-fuel operations to become private concerns and away from tougher scrutiny.
** Exxon Mobil Corp. agreed to sell its 50% stake in a deepwater natural gas project in the Black Sea to Romania’s state-owned Romgaz SA for $1.06 billion.
** A month after a Southern California offshore oil spill, environmental advocates said Tuesday that they plan to sue the federal government over the failure to review and update plans for platforms off the coast reported the Associated Press.
** One of San Diego’s largest residential solar installers unexpectedly closes, leaving customers worried about the fate of their rooftop installation investments.
** The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced a whole line up of nominees for the Energy and Interior Departments, as well as Willie Phillips, Biden’s pick to fill the vacant FERC commissioner seat.
** The ethanol industry group Growth Energy is teeing up a lawsuit against EPA over the slow rollout of its long-awaited biofuel blending proposals, even before the official deadline for EPA to act.
** EPA on Tuesday ordered the city of Benton Harbor, Mich., to bring its water system into compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act after three years of sampling detected lead levels above the federal action level of 15 parts per billion.
World
** Russia’s Gazprom declined to book extra capacity to ship more gas to Europe from January at auctions on Tuesday, a step that would have helped ease prices in a market haunted by worries about Moscow’s intentions reported Reuters.
** Consumers will be threatened with even higher energy prices if the government of Britain backs a “premature” ban on oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, the chief executive of BP has warned.
** Three more British energy retailers collapsed on Tuesday, bringing the number of failures to 18 since early August and forcing more than 2 million households to switch suppliers. The latest casualties were Omni Energy Ltd., AmpowerUK Ltd. and Zebra Power Ltd., with a total of 21,400 domestic customers.
** Norway faces hard choices over the future of two major wind farms stripped of their licences for jeopardising the way of life of Sami reindeer herders, but it remains unclear whether they should be dismantled, the energy minister said.
** Iran’s Revolutionary Guards thwarted an attempt by the United States to detain a tanker carrying the Islamic Republic’s oil in the Sea of Oman, Iranian state TV reported on Wednesday, saying the incident took place recently.
