** North Dakota regulators this week will hold a public hearing on a proposed $390 million wind project in the southern part of the state.
** A coal company owned by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s family agrees to pay $320 million to a Swiss bank to help settle an outstanding $850 million debt.
** Volkswagen aims to hire 1,000 new employees at its Tennessee factory as it gears up to make electric vehicles.
** The Biden administration will soon weigh in on ConocoPhillips’s Willow project on Alaska’s North Slope.
** Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods warns that an abrupt transition to renewable energy will cause society to “pay a high price.” The national average price for a gallon of gasoline is currently nearly $5, causing strife for all drivers, according to AAA.
** U.S. shale oil producers are returning to existing wells and giving them a second, high-pressure blast to lift output for a fraction of the cost of finishing a new well.
** The White House is launching an offshore wind partnership with 11 East Coast states. The partnership will entail building up the supply chain for offshore wind, expanding the workforce and addressing regional issues like fishing and connecting to the electric grid.
** A federal study determined that hardrock mining in a Minnesota wilderness area would risk contaminating the region. In its assessment, the U.S. Forest Service said copper-nickel mining would pose a major risk to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
World
** Ecuador could suspend oil production completely within 48 hours over “acts of vandalism, taking over wells and closing roads”, the Energy Ministry said on Sunday, amid anti-government protests in which at least six people have died.
** European natural gas prices rose as Russia’s deep supply cuts are slowing the pace of refilling storage sites, threatening to fall short of the levels required to keep homes warm in the coming winter.
** Leaders of three French energy companies called on the French public Sunday to immediately reduce consumption of fuel, oil, electricity and gas amid shortages and soaring prices due to Russia’s supply cuts and the war in Ukraine.
** European Union countries agreed Monday that all natural gas storage in the 27-nation bloc should be topped up to at least 80% capacity for next winter as they prepare for the possibility of Russia further reducing deliveries.
** Libya’s state oil company said it may suspend exports from the Gulf of Sirte, which contains many of the OPEC member’s main ports, in the next three days amid a worsening political crisis.