** President Joe Biden is preparing to order the release of up to 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve, according to two people familiar with the decision, in a bid to control energy prices that have spiked as the U.S. and allies have imposed steep sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine reported the Associated Press.
** Work crews in Idaho have completed the retrieval of buried waste from nearly 6 acres at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex at the Idaho National Laboratory. The exhumation helps protect the Snake River Plain Aquifer.
** The federal government’s approved a conservation group’s proposal to expand bison grazing on BLM land in north-central Montana and remove nearly 30 miles of fences.
** After an Applebee’s franchise executive suggested in an email that the company’s best response to increasing gas prices would be lowering new worker wages, an outpost in Lawrence, Kansas saw a mass resignation.
** New Fortress Energy Inc on Thursday proposed to build the first offshore U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility and have it running in 12 months, a relatively short time amid a market hungry for the liquid gas. The terminal would sit in the Gulf of Mexico, 16 miles off the Louisiana coast, and allow tankers to dock and directly load.
** The Biden administration will make available nearly $3.2 billion from the bipartisan infrastructure law to help Americans lower home energy costs, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Wednesday.
** Americans say that Biden administration policies are the No. 1 cause for the increase in fuel costs in the United State, according to a recent poll by Quinnipiac University. The poll found 41 percent of Americans say the Biden administration’s economic policies are to blame for the rise in gas prices.
World
** Asian refiners and traders expect top crude exporter Saudi Arabia to once again hike significantly the prices of its crude going to Asia in May to a record premium over the Middle Eastern benchmarks, a Bloomberg survey showed this week.
** Russian tankers transporting oil and petroleum products have been disappearing from tracking systems. Maritime risk management company Windward reports a spike in Russian tankers turning off transmissions deliberately to circumvent sanctions.
** Canada’s oil industry is at odds with Trudeau over new 2030 climate plans. The industry will have to make drastic cuts in order to meet his goals.
** The world’s top banks provided $742 billion in finance to the fossil fuel industry in 2021, little changed on the prior year, a report on Wednesday showed, despite growing calls to rein in lending to help tackle global warming.
** Germany triggered an emergency plan to manage gas supplies in Europe’s largest economy on Wednesday, an unprecedented move that could see the government ration power if there is a disruption or halt in gas supplies from Russia.
** Vermilion Energy Inc. recently agreed to acquire Leucrotta Exploration Inc. for a net cash purchase price of CA$477 million, expanding the company’s position in the Montney Shale play.