** The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) decreased its forecast for U.S. coal exports following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the resulting closure of the Port of Baltimore. In its April Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA reduced its forecasts for U.S. coal exports for April by 33% and for May by 20% from previous forecasts.
** The U.S. winter natural gas withdrawal season ended with 39% more natural gas in storage compared with the five-year average. From April through October this year,the government forecast less natural gas will be injected into storage than is typical, largely because it expects the United States will produce less natural gas on average in 2Q24 and 3Q24 compared with 1Q24.
** In 2019, EPA staffers were blocked from warning the Senate that they were about to write a PFAS reporting loophole into law, internal communications obtained by The Hill show.
** The Biden administration will require more than 200 chemical plants to cut their emissions of toxic chemicals as part of a broader effort to reduce cancer cases.
** Protests are heating up against a proposed gas-fired power plant in Fort Mohave, a rural community in Arizona’s Mojave Desert where last October county officials passed a moratorium on new renewable energy projects.
** South Carolina lawmakers are advancing sweeping energy legislation that could spur gas-fired development for Santee Cooper and Dominion Energy and Duke Energy utilities, while potentially hampering solar development in the state.
World
** Ukraine’s largest private energy provider said it fears that “ruthless” missile and drone assaults by the Russian military will continue on the country’s power plants. The country is now racing to repair some of the widespread damage to several facilities after Moscow carried out a series of unprecedented attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in recent weeks.
** A UK energy company is to start drilling at the biggest oil field discovered in the North Sea in at least 20 years in spite of a net zero crackdown on the industry. EnQuest plans to bring two fields onstream which have the potential to produce 500 million barrels of crude oil over coming decades.
** Humanity has only two years left “to save the world” by making dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift, the head of the United Nations climate agency said.
** Germany’s industrial heartlands are unlikely to ever fully recover from the energy crisis, the boss of one of the country’s leading electricity companies has warned. The chief executive of energy company RWE said structurally higher gas prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had left Europe’s largest economy at a permanent disadvantage.