** The natural gas industry is challenging the Biden administration over its regulations targeting traditional gas-powered residential furnaces, which a rulemaking energy groups says will impact more than half of all U.S. households.
** Western Caucus Vice Chair Doug Lamborn (CO-05), joined by Chairman Dan Newhouse (WA-04) and Rep. Blake Moore (UT-01), introduced legislation to rescind the Biden Administration’s changes to the FAST-41 process for mining projects, which limit eligible projects to only those that meet the Critical Mineral definition from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
** Maryland becomes the 10th state to adopt California’s Advanced Clean Trucks rule, a rule the American Trucking Association says will add costs to freight shipped by trucks.
** Oil companies will get one last crack at new drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico this week, before the Biden administration imposes a two-year hiatus.
** Tesla is not offering its employees yearly merit-based stock awards, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. Tesla did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
** Texas power regulators will participate in a review of methods used to obtain backup electricity supplies after an uncharacteristically sharp debate between the grid operator and its watchdog.
** A California environmental regulation on diesel-powered truck refrigeration units (TRUs) that is set to expand on Dec. 31 will proceed without a registration fee after the California Trucking Association prevailed in a court battle against the fee.
** Bird Global Inc., the company that put electric scooters onto the sidewalks of major cities, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Southern Florida.
** Citgo Petroleum Corp. was awarded an insurance payment of more than $54 million for almost 1 million barrels of crude seized by the Venezuelan government. A jury in federal court in Manhattan decided late Monday that insurers must pay Citgo for its claims over the lost crude, which it purchased in 2019 from its nominal parent, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, the national oil company controlled by President Nicolas Maduro.
World
** Liquefied natural gas tankers are diverting from the Red Sea due to violence linked to the Israel-Hamas war, threatening longer journeys and delays of the super-chilled fuel.
** Dutch bank ING announced Wednesday that it is accelerating its phasing out of funding for oil and gas exploration and production activities while it increases financing for renewable energy. ING has faced fierce criticism from Dutch climate activists for its funding of fossil fuel companies.
** Canada on Tuesday released final regulations mandating that all passenger cars, SUVs, crossovers and light trucks sold by 2035 must be zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), part of the government’s overall plan to combat climate change. ZEVs must make up at least 20% of all cars sold by 2026 and at least 60% by 2030.
** Global coal demand actually reached a record high in 2022, rising 4% to 8.4 billion tons, according to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) annual report released Friday. The IEA report attributes much of that increase to developing countries in Asia: China’s demand increased 4.6% in 2022.
** Mexico emitted “extreme” amounts of methane from a natural gas pipeline running through its northern border state Durango in 2019, a research paper published on Tuesday showed, citing data collected from satellites.
