** Freeport LNG’s long-shut liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant in Texas started receiving pipeline natural gas over the long U.S. Martin Luther King Jr holiday weekend, according to Refinitiv data.
** Routine groundwater monitoring ended a decade ago in New York City, but federal officials want to resume observations as rising sea levels and intense rainstorms raise the water table, increasing flood risks.
** California, Oregon, Hawaii and Washington topped the nation for electric vehicle sales over the last two years, according to a transportation electrification firm.
** Texas oil and gas industry officials predict a leveling off of production in the Permian Basin this year but otherwise expect high growth through 2040.
** An Iowa county’s Democratic and Republican parties hold a joint meeting to build landowner opposition to a proposed carbon capture pipeline.
** Recently enacted legislation bars Connecticut homeowner associations from blocking solar installations; the state was previously the only one in New England without such protections.
** U.S. natural gas futures dropped about 6% to an 18-month low on Wednesday on forecasts for warmer weather and less heating demand in late January than previously expected.
World
** United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of world leaders and corporate executives Wednesday that the commitment to limiting a global temperature rise is “nearly going up in smoke” as the planet hurtles toward climate disaster.
** Proclaiming that “continuing to operate in Russia is not tenable,” the CEO of one of the major partners in the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project said Jan. 17 that the oil and gas independent will exit Russia entirely. Wintershall will take a one-time 5.3 billion euro non-cash loss as a result of its departure.
** Having shown Germany the back of his hand in August when Chancellor Olaf Scholz asked to buy some of Canada’s abundant natural gas, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeated the performance only two weeks into 2023 — this time snubbing the people of Japan.
** Global oil demand could surge to record highs this year as China lifts pandemic-era closures and reopens its economy, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Wednesday.
** Mexican state oil company Pemex illegally burnt off hydrocarbon resources worth more than $342 million in the three years up to August 2022 at two of its most important new fields, internal documents from the country’s oil regulator showed.