Energy short reads

** Ford Motor Co. announced it is keeping AM radio available in its vehicles following pressure from lawmakers to keep it in its products. CEO Jim Farley said in a Tuesday tweet he spoke to policymakers about keeping AM radio available as part of the emergency alert system and decided it will be included in all 2024 Ford and Lincoln vehicles. He said Ford will also offer software updates to owners of its electric vehicles without AM broadcast capability.

** Truckload carrier Werner Enterprises has lost a key round in the appeal of a jury decision that saddled it with a now more than $100 million judgment as a result of a 2014 accident that resulted in the death of a child and serious injuries to family members.

** Natural gas flaring in the top U.S. shale basin is poised to increase next year, a report released on Tuesday projected, as the region’s output exceeds available pipeline capacity.

** Alaska’s push to become a bigger player in the clean energy market is in the spotlight this week at a conference convened by its Republican governor, even as the state continues to embrace new fossil fuel production, including the controversial Willow oil project on the petroleum-rich North Slope.

** Western US states said Monday they have reached an agreement to cut the amount of water they take from the dwindling Colorado River, which is threatened by a quarter of a century of drought and worsening climate conditions.

** Ford Motor Company contracts to purchase lithium from a proposed geothermal-brine project in California’s Imperial Valley.

** Shell expects to restart operation of a crude pipeline between Houston and Louisiana after it was shut down in April because of a leak.

** LSB Industries, Inc. announced that its President & CEO, Mark Behrman will participate in a fireside chat with Bob Robotti, founder and President of Robotti & Co. on Wednesday, May 24, 2023 at 10:00 am ET. Planned topics of discussion are LSB’s strategy for driving multi-year growth in profitability and shareholder value through production volume improvements, capacity expansion and the development of projects to produce low and no carbon ammonia as part of the global energy transition.

World

** Ukrenergo, the Ukrainian national energy company, has reported that the power line, which powers the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has resumed working, and the power plant itself will be powered from the Ukrainian energy system.

** Qatar’s energy minister warned on Tuesday the “worst is yet to come” for Europe’s oil and gas shortages, saying a warm winter had prevented greater difficulties in recent months. Saad al-Kaabi and his Saudi counterpart Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said a lack of investment in oil and gas, as the world tries to transition to cleaner fuels to prevent global warming, risked causing an energy crunch.

** A week after Japanese regulators postponed the restart of the world’s biggest nuclear power plant due to safety lapses, a careless employee working from home added to the company’s woes. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan’s Niigata prefecture, said an employee placed a stack of documents on top of a car before driving off and losing them.

** Drivers of electric cars are unwittingly releasing more toxic tire particles into the air than those driving petrol vehicles, experts have warned. Scientists, analysts and regulators are growing increasingly concerned about the amount of potentially harmful tiny particles coming off tires, especially those from heavier cars such as electric vehicles, due to the number of toxic petrochemicals that they are made from.

** More than 100 US and EU lawmakers appealed to the leaders of their countries and the United Nations to oust oil executive Sultan Al Jaber as head of this year’s COP28 climate summit.

** China’s solar sector is accelerating an already world-beating pace of installations as costs tumble and demand keeps rising, putting it on track to rush past last year’s record.