** Exxon Mobil Corp on Thursday rejected a proposal by the United Steelworkers union (USW) to end an eight-month lockout of about 600 workers at the company’s Beaumont, Texas, refinery, the company said.
** The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Thursday denied a license to Oklo Power LLC to build and operate the company’s Aurora compact fast reactor in Idaho.
** For the first time, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is adding a new pollutant to a list of those it has deemed unsafe to breathe. It added a chemical called 1-bromopropane (1-BP), normally used in dry cleaning, stain removers, adhesives and cleaners, to its list of hazardous air pollutants.
** U.S. sales of hybrid vehicle sales jumped 76% to 801,550 vehicles last year, accounting for 5% of U.S. light vehicle sales, according to data from analytics firm Wards Intelligence.
** The U.S. has already become the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporter. “LNG exports from the United States topped 7 million tonnes (7.7 million tons) in December, according to ship-tracking data from ICIS LNG Edge, narrowly edging out rival producers Qatar and Australia for the first time,” CNN reports.
** Royal Dutch Shell said it will pursue “at pace” a $7 billion share buyback largely funded from the sale of its U.S. shale business as it faces liquefied natural gas (LNG) outages and slower fuel sales due to the economic hit from Omicron.
World
** Kazakhstan’s biggest oil producer has altered output at the giant Tengiz oil field amid unrest and protests in the country. TCO is a joint venture led by Chevron Corp. that pumps about a third of Kazakhstan’s oil.
** Electricite de France SA switched off the last unit at its Hunterston B nuclear power plant in Scotland on Friday, further crimping supplies in the middle of an energy crunch.