** The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will scrap its current assessment of federal smog standards and start over, a move environmental advocates called an unnecessary delay.
** A group of Virginia-based environmental and conservation groups sued the state Monday over Virginia’s withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon-capping agreement encompassing several other East Coast states.
** Top U.S. energy companies last year paid out more of their earnings to shareholders than they invested in new oil and gas fields for the first time, according to a report released on Tuesday.
** Automaker Stellantis has threatened to move the production of Ram 1500 pickup trucks from suburban Detroit to Mexico, a union leader said Sunday.
** Werner Enterprises has appealed a more than $100 million verdict issued against it to the Texas Supreme Court. The appeal, filed last week, focuses on questions of law rather than the facts of the horrific 2014 crash that killed one family member and severely injured several others.
** Kinder Morgan’s (KMI) unit Tennessee Gas Pipeline declared force majeure on a portion of its pipeline close to Centerville in Hickman County, following an explosion and fire caused by an equipment failure at a compressor station.
** As the Biden administration makes billions of dollars available to remove millions of dangerous lead pipes that can contaminate drinking water and damage brain development in children, some states are turning down funds. Washington, Oregon, Maine and Alaska declined all or most of their federal funds in the first of five years that the mix of grants and loans is available, The Associated Press found.
** General Motors Company GM eliminated nearly 200 engineering positions to realign its engineering resources with its growth strategy. However, these employees will have the opportunity to apply for other open positions within the organization.
** An oil tanker seized off the coast of Texas that for months has been suspected of carrying Iranian oil was offloaded just days after a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote a letter to the White House questioning the delay.
World
** Ecuadorians voted against drilling for oil in a protected area of the Amazon, an important decision that will require the state oil company to end its operations in a region that’s home to isolated tribes and is a hotspot of biodiversity.
** India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have officially started trading with each other in their local currencies. The Indian government announced on Monday that the country’s leading petroleum refiner, Indian Oil Corp., used the local rupee to buy one million barrels of oil from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company — not the U.S. dollar.
** Germany’s greenhouse emissions gap will probably be bigger than the government’s estimates in 2030 even if planned emission reduction measures are fully implemented, a council of climate experts that advises the government said on Tuesday.