Other energy headlines for Thursday

** Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Tuesday that the Biden administration will not ban crude oil exports, despite a push from some Democrats to do so. Speaking before the National Petroleum Council – an advisory board made up of oil industry figures – Granholm said, “We are not considering reinstating the ban on exports.”

** Construction has started on a roughly $2 billion expansion at Exxon Mobil Corp.’s (NYSE: XOM) petrochemical manufacturing complex in Baytown — the largest in the United States — one of the project’s contractors said. The Irving, Texas-based company is adding an alpha olefins unit and a performance polymers unit to the complex, the company said.

** Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, a Democrat who led a congressional delegation to Ukraine this weekend, tells Axios that President Biden is wrong to allow the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to move forward while Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine.

** The New York City Council is expected to vote this week to ban natural gas in new buildings, following in the footsteps of dozens of other smaller U.S. cities seeking to shift from fossil fuels to cleaner forms of energy. Should the law pass, new buildings in the city of 8.8 million residents – biggest in the United States – will have to use electricity for heat and cooking.

** The company working to build a mine in southeast Nebraska to extract a rare element used to make steel lighter and stronger said Tuesday that it may also be able to produce some of the key ingredients needed to make the powerful magnets used in electric vehicles and other high-tech products.

** Toyota’s announcement adds to the plethora of new EV announcements in 2021. U.S. car buyers will have about 20 EV models to pick from in 2022, up from about 10 now, with more on the way in 2023.

** The Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia cleared the water-quality board this week.

** Cheniere Energy Inc. LNG recently asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for extra time to complete and operationalize its planned expansion at the Corpus Christi liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in South Texas, citing challenges triggered by the COVID-19 outbreak.

** The St. Louis-based electric utility Ameren Corp. said in a court filing Tuesday that it will close a coal plant several years early, a move that follows a court order this summer requiring pollution controls that would potentially cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

 

 

World

** While the IEA believes Omicron will dent global oil demand, OPEC remains confident that demand will continue to bounce back strongly from its pandemic lows.

** Sembcorp Energy UK (SEUK) has announced plans to build Europe’s largest battery in Teeside to boost its portfolio and strengthen the UK’s renewable infrastructure as the country pushes to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

** Mexico is not ruling out the possibility of appealing to an international panel over tax incentives proposed by the United States for some U.S.-made electric vehicles, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday.

** Canada has proposed aligning its electric vehicle tax policy with that of the United States to settle a dispute over proposed U.S. credits for American-made vehicles, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters on Monday.