** The Biden administration on Friday rejected more than two dozen oil refinery requests for exemptions from US biofuel-blending requirements.
** Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM has entered into an agreement to acquire Denbury Inc. DEN for $4.9 billion. The move is part of ExxonMobil’s plan to enhance its transition to clean energy with a well-established carbon dioxide sequestration operation. The acquisition will provide XOM access to the biggest pipeline network in the United States.
** AT&T Inc. shares hit an almost three-decade low Friday amid growing concerns of the potentially high costs the phone giant faces if it must clean up contamination due to lead-clad wiring throughout parts of its nationwide network.
** US Climate Envoy John Kerry arrived in China on Sunday for three full days of talks that will test the ability of the world’s top two greenhouse gas emitters to collaborate in the fight against global warming despite deep discord over other issues.
** A $25 million project at a Calpine Corp. power plant near San Francisco will test a technology that could capture 95% of a plant’s carbon emissions, a process California officials say is critical to the state’s climate fight.
** Chevron Corp is comfortable with buying U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) on long-term contracts rather than constructing its own U.S. domestic export facility, said Freeman Shaheen, the company’s head of global gas. The second largest U.S. oil and gas producer in June 2022 signed agreements with LNG developers Cheniere Energy and Venture Global LNG for a combined 4 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of the super-chilled natural gases.
** Tesla built its first Cybertruck at the electric-vehicle maker’s plant in Austin, Texas, the company said in a tweet on Saturday, after two years of delays. Tesla founder Elon Musk introduced the pickup truck in a 2019 reveal where the vehicle’s designer cracked the vehicle’s supposedly unbreakable “armor glass” windows.
World
** New research shows that persistently pumping groundwater has shifted Earth’s axis. The reason is that we’re moving all that water mass from under the continents to the oceans.
** After a surprising announcement last year, in which Shell set 2050 as its target to reach net-zero planet-overheating gas pollution, the company became the latest to join others like BP in scaling back their climate pledges, according to Euronews.green.
** Shell plc (SHEL) conducted a post-well analysis of a recent Pensacola North Sea discovery, revealing a considerable increase in the estimated oil and gas resources that are roughly twice the earlier forecasts, per a Deltic Energy Plc press release. Deltic Energy has a 30% working interest in the Shell-operated license of Pensacola natural gas discovery.
** The world needs an “urgent” exit from fossil fuels as part of efforts to slash planet-heating emissions and rein in global warming, a coalition of countries including EU economies and climate-vulnerable nations said Friday. In a statement released at the close of climate talks in Brussels, the High Ambition Coalition said the year-end COP28 talks must pave the way for “an urgent and just transition to renewables, a more climate resilient world, and climate justice for all”.
** Deadly fires have raged for a century in mines in India’s Jharkhand state, where Savitri Mahto is one of 100,000 people risking their lives shovelling coal to supply insatiable demand. Underground fires, which scientists believe started in a mine accident in 1916, create sinkholes that swallow people and homes. Coal pickers and activists report hundreds of people have died over the decades.
** Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday launched the construction of a 1,200-megawatt Chinese-designed nuclear energy project, which will be built at a cost of $3.5 billion as part of the government efforts to generate more clean energy in the Islamic nation.
** Venezuela is preparing to significantly increase natural gas prices as it continues to phase out long-standing fuel subsidies in search for revenue. The nation’s oil ministry plans to triple prices for the fuel, its first increase in more than a decade, after years of hyperinflation reduced the price to nearly nothing, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
** Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government hopes to unveil a plan by the end of this year to streamline permitting for mining projects as the US and its allies push to accelerate the production of critical minerals in North America.