** Following a $16.8 billion quarterly loss, BP says it will cut oil production 40% by 2030 and invest more in renewable energy, an announcement one climate advocate says “has radically changed the game.”
** Exxon Mobil Corp told employees it would begin suspending the employer match to retirement savings plans beginning in early October, said sources who received a message from the company on Tuesday.
** Occidental Petroleum Corp. has restored employee pay cuts imposed after oil prices tumbled and doubled the salary cap for executives to $500,000 a year.
** Virgin Atlantic, the airline founded by British businessman Richard Branson, filed Tuesday for relief from creditors as the virus pandemic hammers the airline industry.
** U.S. pipeline company Equitrans Midstream Corp said on Tuesday it still expects to complete the $5.4 billion Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia in early 2021.
** CenterPoint Energy, the company that delivers electricity and natural gas to the Houston area, is combining its regulated utility operations in Indiana and Texas into one organization and will call it CenterPoint.
** The U.S. could generate $1.7 billion for the Treasury over the next two years and pave the way for tens of thousands of new clean-energy jobs by leasing out offshore wind areas already under study by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management , according to a new Wood Mackenzie analysis.
** Exelon may be forced to close its Illinois nuclear plants if state legislation is not passed to bolster their eroding financial prospects. But subsidiary utility Commonwealth Edison’s involvement in a bribery scandal has complicated this and other key policy efforts in its home state.
** TVA moves to change its policies following President Trump’s executive order limiting federal agencies from using workers with H1B visas. The utility’s CEO defended his $8 million salary after being criticized by the president.
** Developers say North Carolina’s first offshore wind farm could be operational by 2026.
** A graphic design and printing company installs a 1.3 MW rooftop solar project at its St. Paul, Minnesota, headquarters, making it the largest project in the city.
** After a recent court ruling involving the Keystone XL pipeline, the Army Corps of Engineers proposes to separate oil and gas pipelines from a permitting program involving utility projects that cross waterways.
** The owner of a former hydroelectric dam that failed in eastern Michigan earlier this year files for bankruptcy.
** Midland, Texas oil driller Diamondback Energy is the latest energy company to point to the spread of the coronavirus pandemic to explain to shareholders how it was that the company lost so much money during the second quarter. It lost $2.4 billion during the second quarter, a sharp reversal from the $356 million profit it reported a year earlier,
** A rare desert wildflower could jeopardize plans for a proposed lithium mine in Nevada.