** UPS and the Teamsters reached an agreement on a new five-year contract, averting a potential strike by roughly 330,000 package delivery drivers and package sorters that could have impacted many companies’ supply chains.
** Chevron Corp.’s board is waiving the mandatory retirement age for Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth, giving the company more time to find a successor as it notches record production from the world’s most prolific shale basin.
** Shares of RTX Corp. (NYSE: RTX) plummeted Tuesday after the company formerly known as Raytheon Technologies said a defect in a powdered metal used for jet engines will require its Pratt & Whitney division to remove some engines from service sooner than expected in order to conduct inspections.
** The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. refining capacity increased slightly for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, as of January 1, 2023, reversing two years of decline. Operable atmospheric crude oil distillation capacity, our primary measure of refinery capacity in the United States, totaled 18.1 million barrels per calendar day (b/cd), a 1% increase from 2022.
** More than 110 congressional Democrats call on President Biden to enact a standard that gives workers protection during extreme heat.
** Seattle University becomes Washington’s first higher education institution to completely divest from fossil fuel interests.
** The incandescent lightbulb — will meet its official demise by the end of the month. Manufacturers and retailers have already been removing the inefficient bulbs from their shelves, a trend driven in large part by Energy Department rules that bar their sale.
** Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to strengthen and finalize rules that could speed the deployment of clean energy and transmission lines.
** EQT Corp. on Tuesday said it had achieved a world record for drilling a natural gas well over a 48-hour period. The Pittsburgh-based driller, the country’s largest independent natural gas producer, disclosed in its quarterly earnings release Tuesday it had drilled 18,200 feet over a 48-hour period at a single well site in the second quarter of 2023. The record had been verified by records kept by Baker Hughes, the Texas-based oilfield services and analysis firm.
World
** A cargo ship carrying thousands of vehicles is currently ablaze just off the coast of the Netherlands. One crew member has died as a result of the accident, while several others have been injured trying to escape the flames. The Coast Guard is struggling to put out the fire, which they believe originated from an electric vehicle onboard.
** Germany will rely on trade partners for the overwhelming majority of its future hydrogen needs as Europe’s largest economy charts a transition away from fossil fuels.
** Dutch and British wholesale gas prices rose on Tuesday morning on concerns over more possible outages at major Norwegian gas infrastructure and low numbers of scheduled arrivals of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
** In Nelson Mandela Bay, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, thousands of hectares of land could one day become the world’s largest green ammonia plant. Projected to start operations in 2026, the plant will cost $4.6 billion. It will be powered by a nearby solar farm and will get its water — of which vast amounts are needed to make ammonia — from a local table salt factory that desalinates seawater.
** Canada on Monday released a framework for eliminating inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, making it the first G20 country to deliver on a 2009 commitment to rationalise and phase out government support for the sector.