** California advocates worry Phillips 66 may shirk its responsibilities to clean up a “lake of hydrocarbons” that has accumulated under a Los Angeles-area refinery slated for closure later this year.
** Republican U.S. senators move to strip federal funding for the U.S. Postal Service’s transition to an EV fleet to save taxpayer money, though industry observers say the move would have the opposite effect.
** Brad Delco has been named the new Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Finance. He previously had been a Senior Vice President of Finance. Prior to joining J.B. Hunt, Delco spent 14 years at Stephens Inc., a privately-owned investment banking and financial services firm.
** The U.S. Commerce Department announces a national security probe into wind turbine component imports, which could lead to further tariffs.
** The value of U.S. oil and gas company mergers and acquisitions reached $206 billion in 2024, a 331% increase from the year before.
** Researchers estimate waste from active mines around the U.S. contains significant amounts of critical minerals, including enough lithium in a year’s worth of by-products to power 10 million EVs.
** A northwestern Colorado community establishes a geothermal heated and cooled business park to spur economic development in advance of a scheduled coal plant and mine closure.
** National Grid Ventures (NGV) will test the world’s first 100% hydrogen-fueled linear generator at its Northport plant for 12 months, supported by $11 million in New York State funding.
World
** Norway has made one of its biggest North Sea oil discoveries in a decade, heightening scrutiny on Ed Miliband’s decision to end Britain’s fossil fuel exploration in the area. Oil field operator Aker BP uncovered a field that could yield the equivalent of 134 million barrels of oil in an area thought to have already been fully explored.
** Russian oil supplies to Hungary and Slovakia could be suspended for at least five days after a Ukrainian strike on a facility in Russia, Hungarian and Slovakian officials said on Friday, in a widening of the fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
** The sharp jump in China’s imports of rare earth ore from the United States in July was probably the final customs accounting of shipments from U.S. supplier MP Materials.
** Although China has been trying to move away from foreign chips for several years now, the Financial Times says that this effort has now intensified after being fueled by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying the aim was to make China “addicted” to US tech during an interview after Washington allowed Nvidia to resume the sales of its H20 to the country, using a term that holds signifcant cultural undertones in China.
