** Environmentalists are urging the White House to use an obscure legal tool to thwart TC Energy Corp.’s planned expansion of a natural gas pipeline in the Pacific Northwest that they say would stoke climate change.
** Freezing temperatures sweeping the US shut in more than half of North Dakota’s oil production and curbed refinery operations in Texas.
** Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal agency that supplies power to 10 million people in the region, recommended on Tuesday that customers conserve electricity as cold weather sweeps across the US.
** Kentucky’s largest utility has built what it says is the state’s first utility-scale wind turbine in an effort to test the potential of wind energy.
** U.S. homes and businesses used a record amount of natural gas on Tuesday as demand for the fuel for heating and power generation soared during an Arctic blast that also cut gas output to near a 13-month low by freezing wells.
** This year’s US presidential election will help determine whether the world stems global warming fast enough to avoid its most severe impacts, according to John Kerry, the country’s climate envoy.
World
** OPEC’s top official said forecasts that oil demand is heading toward a peak will prove just as misguided as earlier predictions that supply was reaching its zenith.
** A crucial oil pipeline that’s been shut for almost 10 months is being held up further by disagreements with producers over payments, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said.
** Shell said Tuesday it agreed to sell its onshore business in Nigeria’s Niger Delta to a consortium of companies in a deal worth $2.4 billion, the latest move by the energy company to limit its exposure in the West African nation amid long-running complaints of environmental pollution caused by the oil industry.