** The Department of Transportation declared a regional emergency Saturday affecting four Midwest states after a fire earlier this week caused an “unanticipated shutdown” of a BP oil refinery in Indiana. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin collectively receive up to 25% of their fuel from the Whiting refinery.
** Nearly 200 criminal cases against pipeline protesters are still open from a long series of Line 3 protests in Minnesota last year.
** Washington state and Oregon officials say they plan to follow California’s lead and ban sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
** All new cars sold in Massachusetts must be powered by electricity or hydrogen by 2035, a state policy triggered by a California law enacting the same measure.
** Environmentalists sue the federal Bureau of Land Management over its approval of an Alaska oil exploration program, saying the agency failed to consider potential climate impacts.
** The owner of a pipeline that ruptured off the southern California coast last year and spilled 25,000 gallons of crude settles a class-action lawsuit filed by affected businesses.
** Idaho Power agrees to pay $1.5 million to settle a federal civil action relating to Oregon wildfires in 2014 and 2015.
** An outage at the largest US Midwest refinery is raising wholesale fuel prices regionally just as the agricultural sector gears up for its busiest time of year. BP PLC shut two crude units at its 435,000 barrel-a-day Whiting, Indiana, refinery after a fire Wednesday, Wood Mackenzie’s Genscape said.
World
** The world narrowly avoided a radiation disaster after a Russian-controlled nuclear plant was completely disconnected from Ukraine’s power grid, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was back on the grid and supplying electricity to Ukraine on Friday, officials said, a day after it was disconnected from the national power grid for the first time in its 40-year history.
** Ford did not want to upset its customers and future buyers of electric vehicles. As consumers grapple with soaring prices for virtually everything from groceries to basic necessities to gallons of gas at the pump, the automaker has opted for a phased strategy to announce increases prices of its electric vehicles.
** Skyrocketing prices for natural gas have Europeans scrambling for alternative energy sources.In Germany, where households face a 480 euro rise in their gas bills, people are resorting to stockpiling firewood.
** The price of power in Europe’s two key markets surged more 25% on Friday, a chaotic spike that will see the continent’s leaders hold an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis.
** The global diesel market looks set to get even tighter as power generators and industrial users seek relief from surging natural gas prices.
