** California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs into law three bills cracking down on the oil and gas industry, including one that allows local governments to block new drilling, one that ups cleanup requirements for idle wells and another that bans low-production wells from operating in a Los Angeles-area oilfield.
** New Jersey hit the pause button Wednesday on an offshore wind energy project that is having a hard time finding someone to manufacture blades for its turbines. The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities granted Leading Light Wind a pause on its project through Dec. 20 while its developers seek a source for the crucial components.
** The increasingly rapid deployment of renewables around the world is still not enough to meet global goals, according to a group of political and climate leaders speaking Tuesday at the Global Renewables Summit in New York.
** A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water because high levels could pose a risk to the intellectual development of children. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be.
** In a bipartisan vote, the House approved a forestry bill opposed by the Biden administration. The vote was 268-151. Fifty-five Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of the bill. The legislation seeks to exempt projects like cutting down trees in an effort to prevent wildfires from environmental reviews.
** A US company has been knocked out of a competition to build the first mini-nuclear power plants in Britain, leaving four contenders in the running. Executives at NuScale Power were told on Wednesday afternoon that they had been eliminated from the small modular reactor (SMR) design competition.
World
** The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies will go ahead with a planned oil production increase in December but first need to cut output to address overproduction by some members, two OPEC+ sources said on Thursday reported Reuters. The Financial Times earlier reported Saudi Arabia is committed to OPEC+ raising production on Dec. 1 and dropping its unofficial $100 a barrel oil price target to win back market share.
** A presidential spokesperson for Nigeria indicated Thursday that Exxon Mobil Corp. has proposed a $10 billion investment in offshore oil operations in a new investment push in the country.
** A new onshore wind farm on the Shetland Islands will connect 500,000 UK homes to renewable energy, Interesting Engineering reported. Shetland is the windiest region in the UK, making it an apt choice for wind energy production, the publication explained.
** Stellantis wants to adopt the low-cost mindset of Chinese EV makers despite the European and U.S. tariffs CEO Carlos Tavares lambasts as anticompetitive, but the world’s No. 4 automaker must navigate trade barriers on both sides of the Atlantic if it wants to succeed.
** Elon Musk’s SpaceX plans to invest $1.5 billion in Vietnam in the near future, the government of the Communist-run nation said on Thursday, which could help resolve a stalemate over the launch of its Starlink satellite services there.