** The company that operates America’s biggest fuel pipeline has reportedly paid a ransom of nearly $5m (£3.5m) to hackers who shut down the facility last week triggering fuel shortages and price hikes across the East Coast. Colonial Pipeline paid the extortion fee on Friday, Bloomberg reported, despite reports that it had no plans to do so and concerns that paying a ransom simply encourages hackers.
** U.S. regulators on Friday ordered the Limetree Bay refinery on St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, to cease operations for at least 60 days, throwing the multibillion-dollar overhaul of the massive plant into jeopardy.
** Jimmy Harrell, a supervisor on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, has died at age 65. Harrell, who worked for rig owner Transocean, died Monday, according to Wolf Funeral Home in Morton, Mississippi. He had battled cancer for a year.
** Europe faces the prospect of higher electricity bills and a supply crunch, as utilities struggle to finance new gas-fired power plants unless they meet tougher emissions criteria imposed by banks pressured to stop financing fossil-fuel projects.
** Northern Border Pipeline said ethane accounted for more than 14% of the volume of natural gas moved on the pipeline, causing the heat content to rise above the upper limit on most gas pipes, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said.
** Exxon Mobil shareholders may shake up the company’s board at their annual meeting on May 26. Proxy advisor Institutional Shareholder Services backed three of the four board candidates submitted by Engine No. 1, saying the activist investor made a “compelling case” that change was needed on Exxon Mobil’s board.
** Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich introduced a bill that would help states that rely on oil and gas revenue weather the U.S. transition away from fossil fuels by offering federal support to help fill gaps in state and school budgets hit by a decline in oil and gas production.
** Chevron Corp said a fire that broke out at its 245,271 barrel-per-day Richmond, California refinery on Friday morning has been extinguished and no injuries were reported. In addition to the refinery fire crew, the Richmond fire department responded to the fire, the company said in a statement, adding the plant also experienced a process unit upset that caused some flaring.
** A federal judge has rejected a second attempt by opponents of the proposed Twin Metals copper-nickel mine in northeastern Minnesota to invalidate the mineral rights leases needed for the project.
** Marathon Petroleum Corp. plans to repurchase as much as $10 billion of stock after the U.S. oil refiner completed the sale of its Speedway fuel retail chain. The plan starts with a cash tender offer to buy as much as $4 billion of shares, or about 10% of its current market value, the company said Friday.
** South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group said it planned to invest $7.4 billion in the United States by 2025 to produce electric vehicles, upgrade production facilities and further its investment in smart mobility solutions.
** Federal environmental officials have issued an emergency order against a South Carolina pulp and paper mill to stop an odor that’s sickened residents in the Carolinas for many months, including Rock Hill and parts of south Charlotte.