Energy news in brief

** Six American oil executives under house arrest in Venezuela were rounded up by police hours after President Donald Trump met Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s chief opponent at the White House, according to family members of the men. Alirio Zambrano said early Thursday that the executives of Houston-based Citgo were abruptly taken from their homes last night by the SEBIN intelligence police. Zambrano, the brother of two of the six detained men, said their current whereabouts are unknown.

** A Franklin & Marshall poll found Pennsylvania voters are split in their views on the natural gas industry — largely on the basis of geography, age, and other demographics. About half of the 628 registered voters surveyed said they support the industry — while the same amount say they’d be in favor of a fracking ban like those in Maryland and New York.

** Large business groups support Ameren Missouri’s appeal of a court ruling requiring the utility to add pollution controls at a St. Louis-area coal plant. 

** New benchmarking requirements in St. Paul, Minnesota, will track energy usage in 700 buildings in an effort to lower the city’s emissions. 

** Miners at Carlsbad, New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant have completed a “rough cut” on the final permitted panel to hold nuclear waste.

** The ACLU sues a Montana agency to force the public release of documents detailing the state’s planned response to potential Keystone XL pipeline protests.

** The BLM agrees to temporarily stop fracking operations near Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park to conduct environmental studies.

** The Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain oil pipeline is expected to cost C$12.6 billion ($9.47 billion) to expand, a sharp increase from the previous estimate of C$7.4 billion, the pipeline company’s chief executive said on Friday. The project will twin a 67-year-old pipeline and nearly triple capacity to 890,000 barrels per day moving from Alberta to a Pacific coast port near Vancouver.**