Dive Brief: Heading into the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season, CenterPoint Energy said Thursday that it has completed all of the critical portions of its Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative, including installing 26,000 storm-resilient poles, moving 400 miles of power lines underground and adding more than 5,100 automation devices to the electric system. CenterPoint launched the resiliency initiative last summer after Hurricane Beryl left almost 2.3 million customers around Houston without power. CenterPoint’s use of mobile generation following Beryl also led to an audit of the utility’s management practices. Consulting firm Moss Adams presented its findings to the Public Utility Commission of Texas on May 15, concluding the utility did not complete a formal vendor risk assessment prior to signing an $800 million leasing agreement for the generators. Dive Insight: CenterPoint faced additional scrutiny and proposed almost $6 billion in resilience investments following Beryl. The hurricane left about 80% of Houston-area customers without power, and the mobile generators the utility leased were largely unused during recovery. The Moss Adams audit concluded that CenterPoint’s procurement policy generally aligned with best practices, but it also said the utility should “ensure that vendor risk assessments are completed for all procurements” and should “implement a more detailed framework for identifying, assessing, and managing conflicts of interest.” In a response to the PUCT, CenterPoint said it agrees with the recommendations around vendor risk assessments and that its procurement process is “still maturing.” “We note that we did nevertheless consider the risks presented by the potential counterparties in reviewing bids and negotiating terms,” the utility said. The utility faced criticism last year for its lease of 32-MW and 5-MW generators from Life Cycle Power, and questions were raised about possible conflicts of interest in the procurement. CenterPoint disagreed with audit findings that it did not adequately consider potential conflicts

Dive Brief: In an emergency order, the U.S. Department of Energy on Friday directed Consumers Energy to delay, by about three months, shutting down a 1,560-MW, coal-fired power plant in Michigan, saying the Midcontinent region faces possible power outages this summer. In determining that the J.H. Campbell power plant in West Olive, Michigan, should run until Aug. 21, past its planned May 31 shutdown, DOE cited a North American Electric Reliability Corp. report that found that the Midcontinent Independent System Operator faces an elevated risk of power outages during high demand or lower power output periods this summer. Public Citizen plans to challenge the DOE’s “abuse of emergency authorities” when Consumers Energy seeks to recoup its costs for running the Campbell power plant longer than expected in an expected proceeding at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the consumer advocacy group said. Dive Insight: The Federal Power Act’s section 202(c) gives the DOE secretary the authority to temporarily order power plants to operate during wars and emergencies. It has been used 16 times since August 2020, according to DOE. In January, President Donald Trump declared that the United States faces an “energy emergency” and in April he ordered DOE Secretary Chris Wright to develop a process for issuing emergency orders to keep power plants operating in areas of the country deemed to have potential grid reliability problems. DOE cited two reports in finding that an emergency exists in MISO: NERC’s 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment issued on May 14 and the grid operator’s capacity auction results released in late April. The NERC assessment found that MISO, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ISO New England and the Southwest Power Pool were at elevated risks of not having enough power supplies during stressed peak demand periods. No region was at high risk of electricity shortfalls,

ABB announced last week that it will now offer a Battery Energy Storage Systems-as-a-service solution that allows companies to deploy battery storage without upfront investment, with ABB managing deployment, maintenance and optimization. “The offer includes all hardware, software and lifecycle support,” ABB said in a Wednesday release, “so businesses can focus on their core operations while improving energy efficiency, resilience and long-term sustainability.” ABB said it will offer BESS-as-a-service in partnership with GridBeyond, using GridBeyond’s AI-driven platform to “[optimize] the performance of ABB’s BESS-as-a-Service assets [and enable] real-time energy optimisation, demand-side response participation, and access to new revenue streams in global energy markets.” “In addition, GridBeyond’s platform will deliver accurate energy price forecasting to optimise energy storage operations enabling informed decision-making, allowing for strategic charging and discharging that aligns with market dynamics and prolong the life of batteries,” GridBeyond said in a Wednesday release. ABB said it designed BESS-as-a-service to be “technology agnostic” and work with any type of battery technology. The company described the product as supporting a shift from capital expenditures, or upfront investments, to operational expenditures, or day-to-day costs. “Customers tell us that while they want to deploy the latest technologies to improve energy security and reduce their emissions and costs, they face financial obstacles,” said Stuart Thompson, division president of ABB’s Electrification Service Division. “We see BESS-as-a-Service as not just a new offering but a strategic lever for the division’s growth and innovation. We see significant potential to scale this globally.” GridBeyond said it and ABB will also collaborate with Tallarna, a climate tech and finance platform, which will “[bring] its data analytics software, insurance solutions, and financing expertise to de-risk BESS projects and provide visibility into the financial benefits of these initiatives.”

Hot weather sparked a string of wildfires around Alberta over the weekend, including some near oil and gas wells operated by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and others. Four out-of-control fires were burning in Alberta at 4:15 p.m. Monday, including a 2,000-hectare blaze near Swan Hills. The province issued a notice to the town’s residents telling them to prepare to evacuate within an hour if needed.  That fire is less than half a kilometer away from a CNRL-operated well site and within 20 kilometers of separate well sites operated by CNRL and other companies. Canadian Natural said in an email that it’s monitoring the wildfire situation across its operations, adding that it’s working to ensure that staff living in evacuation areas are safe and that it has emergency-response plans in place. Alberta Wildfire didn’t respond to a phone call seeking comment.  Wildfires present a regular threat to the province’s oil and gas production, typically from March through October. Fort McMurray, the largest population center near Alberta’s massive oil-sands operations, was heavily damaged by a blaze in 2016 that forced thousands to evacuate and temporarily shut more than 1 million barrels of daily oil output. WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed. MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR Bloomberg

Karl Littau is the chief technology officer of Sakuu, a San Jose-based company providing commercial-scale printing equipment and technologies to the battery industry. The recent battery fires at the Vistra Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility on the California coast are a tragedy. A large regional energy source was ruined, nearby residents evacuated and already there are lawsuits and questions about toxins released into the environment. Battery energy storage system, or BESS, facilities are essential for leveraging renewable energy resources like solar, since they capture daytime electricity production and supply it to the grid after sundown when demand remains high. But communities may become more hesitant about hosting these facilities. So it’s a tragedy because society desperately needs more renewable energy, more grid storage and more BESS facilities — and this could slow things down. (Lest we forget: Non-renewable energy production is not free from fire risk, as residents of Martinez, California, can attest.) The saddest thing is that BESS fires like Vistra’s are entirely preventable. It all comes down to how batteries are made. Understanding batteries I don’t want to minimize this catastrophic fire, but let’s be clear: Lithium-ion batteries are incredibly safe. There are literally billions of them in use every day around the world, functioning reliably and without incident. But changing the way they are manufactured will make them even safer and virtually eliminate the possibility of fires. Lithium batteries need no air to burn. Above a certain temperature, a battery fire is self-sustaining — it can’t be “choked off” with traditional firefighting techniques. It would probably burn on the moon! All firefighters can safely do is wait for it to burn out and keep it from spreading. As with nearly all lithium-ion batteries, BESS batteries are made of thin layers of anode and cathode materials interdigitated together

Crude prices appear to be consolidating around the $65 per barrel level as markets await the upcoming OPEC+ meeting, Ole R. Hvalbye, a commodities analyst at Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (SEB), said in an oil report sent to Rigzone by the SEB team on Tuesday. “We expect the group to finalize its July output plans, driven by the eight key producers known as the ‘Voluntary Eight’, on May 31st, one day ahead of the original schedule,” Hvalbye stated in the report. “We assign a high probability to another sizeable output increase of 411,000 barrels per day. However, this potential hike seems largely priced in already,” he added. “While a minor price dip may occur on opening next week (Monday morning), we expect market reactions to remain relatively muted,” he continued. A release posted on OPEC’s website on May 3 announced that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria, and Oman “will implement a production adjustment of 411,000 barrels per day in June 2025 from [the] May 2025 required production level”. “The eight OPEC+ countries, which previously announced additional voluntary adjustments in April and November 2023 … met virtually on 3 May 2025, to review global market conditions and outlook,” that release noted. “In view of the current healthy market fundamentals, as reflected in the low oil inventories, and in accordance with the decision agreed upon on 5 December 2024 to start a gradual and flexible return of the 2.2 million barrels per day voluntary adjustments starting from 1 April 2025, the eight participating countries will implement a production adjustment of 411,000 barrels per day in June 2025 from May 2025 required production level,” it added. The release highlighted that “this is equivalent to three monthly increments” and pointed out that “the gradual increases may be paused or reversed subject