** The Western Energy Alliance appeared in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming on Friday morning in its lawsuit challenging the Department of the Interior’s failure to hold quarterly onshore oil and natural gas lease sales. The suit, Western Energy Alliance v Biden, was filed in January 2021 after President Biden signed the Executive Order on Climate Change (#14008) that banned lease sales.
** Skyrocketing natural gas prices have raised manufacturing and transportation costs across many U.S. industries, and the situation should persist as the United States exports more gas to Europe to make up for Russian supplies lost to sanctions.
** The cancellations of three offshore drilling lease sales this week has injected a degree of uncertainty into the future of offshore drilling. The canceled auctions mean there are no sales now scheduled and it’s unclear precisely when that will change. The Interior Department is working on a new leasing plan, but it has not said when that will be issued.
** A proposed carbon pipeline would transport captured emissions from Iowa ethanol producers to underground storage in Decatur, Illinois.
** A carbon pipeline developer asks South Dakota regulators to extend a deadline for approving or denying permits for a project that would end in North Dakota.
World
** Italian energy group Eni will begin the process of opening an account in roubles next week to pay for Russian gas unless it is told that would breach sanctions, three sources close to the matter said reported Reuters.
** Germany plans to stop importing Russian oil by the end of the year even if the European Union fails to agree on an EU-wide ban in its next set of sanctions, government officials said.
** EU foreign ministers sought to publicly pressure Hungary on Monday to lift its veto of a proposed oil embargo on Russia, with Lithuania saying the bloc was being “held hostage by one member state”.
** Saudi Arabia is on track to lift oil production capacity by more than 1 million barrels per day to over 13 million barrels bpd by the end of 2026 or start of 2027, the energy minister said on Monday.
** Chevron Corp’s Gorgon carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Australia is working at only half its capacity nearly three years after starting up and the company has no timeframe for delivering on targets it has so far failed to meet, a senior executive said.