** The Biden administration on Saturday issued a final rule aimed at reducing methane emissions, targeting the U.S. oil and natural gas industry for its role in global warming as President Joe Biden seeks to advance his climate legacy.
** Nearly a decade after the Flint Water Crisis, the Biden administration is proposing to require the removal of water lines made from lead in 10 years. Under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed rule, water systems would have to replace lead service lines in 10 years, with limited exceptions.
** More than 200 Republican lawmakers are pushing for forthcoming legislation to fund the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to include language that bars the agency from pursuing its efforts to shift the U.S. car fleet toward electric vehicles.
** The U.S. government is willing to help build enough new clean energy projects in the Pacific Northwest to replace the hydropower generated by four controversial dams on the Snake River, according to a leaked Biden administration document that is giving hope to conservationists who have long sought the removal of the dams as a key to restoring depleted salmon runs.
** Colorado-based cooperative Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association will accelerate the closure of a coal-fired unit in the northwestern part of the state, and also announced a retirement date for an Arizona coal plant, as part of the utility’s latest electric resource plan (ERP).
** Enbridge Inc. proposed pipeline tunnel under Michigan’s Straits of Mackinac was approved by a key commission, a win for the company amid a long-running dispute with the state’s governor over the conduit’s future.
** Senate Energy Committee Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) blasted the Biden administration’s new guidance on “foreign entities of concern” (FEOCs) ineligible for the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) electric vehicle (EV) tax credits, calling them contradictory to the text of the landmark climate law.
World
** Angola rejected a new output quota handed to it by OPEC and said it planned to breach it, a rare challenge to the cartel that heralds more infighting ahead.
** Europe’s biggest container lines want to phase out ships powered only by fossil fuels. The proposal was announced Friday in a joint statement from Mediterranean Shipping Co., A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, CMA CGM SA and Hapag-Lloyd AG — four of the world’s top five carriers.
** Norway’s Petroleum and Energy Minister Terje Aasland on Friday unveiled the ConocoPhillips-operated Tommeliten A gas development in the southern reaches of Norway’s economic zone. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, gas supplies from Norway are key to safeguarding Europe’s energy security in the coming years.
** Nearly one-third (29%) of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports in 2022 was supplied by exporting countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region—Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Algeria, and Egypt—according to data from the International Group of Liquefied Natural Gas Importers (GIIGNL).
** Niger has started generating electricity from a solar plant near the capital Niamey to make up for power shortages caused by neighboring Nigeria cutting energy supplies, according to several reports.
** Cargill Inc.’s push into renewable energy will include construction of as many as three European plants to produce green gas from farming waste.