The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should limit who pays for the U.S. Department of Energy’s decision to keep a coal-fired power plant in Michigan operating past its planned retirement, according to comments filed at the agency on Friday. Further, there is no evidence that delaying the retirement of Consumer Energy’s majority-owned, 1,560-MW J.H. Campbell power plant will provide benefits to ratepayers in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator footprint, according to the Citizens Utility Board of Illinois and 15 other public interest groups. Forcing MISO customers to pay for a power plant that does not benefit them would violate the Federal Power Act’s cost causation requirement, the groups said in their comments. On May 21, DOE declared that there is an energy emergency in MISO’s northern and central regions and ordered that the Campbell plant should run until Aug. 21, past its planned May 30 shutdown date. The Michigan attorney general’s office and a coalition of advocacy groups last week asked DOE to reverse its order. Consumers Energy on June 6 filed a complaint at FERC seeking to establish a pathway for it to recover its costs to keep the plant in Michigan running. Currently, MISO lacks a mechanism to pay generators that run under DOE emergency orders, and the grid operator has no way to allocate those costs, according to Consumers. Consumers proposed allocating its costs related to DOE’s decision to ratepayers in MISO zones 1 to 7, which covers parts of Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. MISO supported creating a cost-recovery mechanism for the DOE’s order on the Campbell plant, according to a filing at FERC. MISO said it did not intend to contest DOE’s characterization that a shortage of electricity or power plants has triggered an emergency in its footprint. However, MISO’s capacity

The United States Department of Energy has opened application for testing advanced nuclear reactors outside of national laboratories using the federal authorization process. “Seeking DOE authorization provided under the Atomic Energy Act will help unlock private funding and provide a fast-tracked approach to enable future commercial licensing activities for potential applicants”, the DOE said in a press release. The call for applications results from an order issued by President Donald Trump May 23 for reforming the national lab process for reactor testing, establishing a pilot program for reactor construction and operation outside of national labs and streamlining environmental reviews for reactor facilities. “With some rare and arguable exceptions, no advanced reactors have yet been deployed in America”, Trump said in the executive order. “I find that design, construction, operation, and disposition of such reactors under the auspices of the Department – and not to produce commercial electric power – would be for research purposes” rather than for demonstration of commercial viability, the president wrote. “The purpose of testing these reactors at this stage in America’s industrial evolution is to establish fundamental technological viability. “Thus, at least for the foreseeable future, advanced reactors over which the Department exercises sufficient control and that do not produce commercial electric power, including those ‘under contract with and for the account of the [Department],” 42 U.S.C. 2140(a)(2), fall within the jurisdiction of the Department, which has authority to foster research and development in nuclear reactors”. The order aims to have at least three advanced reactors achieve “criticality” by July 2026. U.S. law defines an advanced nuclear reactor as a fusion reactor or a radioisotope power system that uses heat from radioactive decay to generate energy. A nuclear fission reactor may also be considered an advanced reactor if it has significant improvements compared to reactors operating as of

In a statement posted on its site recently, the Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) revealed its latest preliminary crude oil and natural gas production figures. The preliminary reported total volume of crude oil in Texas in March was 121,361,548 barrels, according to the statement, which showed that the preliminary reported total volume of natural gas in the state during the same month was 918.4 billion cubic feet. The RRC noted in the statement that crude oil and natural gas production for March came from 157,192 oil wells and 83,898 gas wells. In its statement, the RRC highlighted that crude oil production reported by the RRC is limited to oil produced from oil leases and does not include condensate, which the organization said is reported separately by the RRC. The RRC also pointed out in the statement that preliminary figures are based on production volumes reported by operators and said they will be updated as late and corrected production reports are received. The RRC’s statement showed that the updated reported total volume of crude oil in Texas in March 2024 was 143,460,647 barrels. The preliminary reported total volume was 120,766,747 barrels, the statement highlighted. It showed that the updated reported total volume of natural gas in the state came in at 1.07 trillion cubic feet in March last year. The preliminary reported total volume was 931.5 billion cubic feet, the statement outlined. According to the RRC’s statement, Martin was Texas’ top crude oil producing county by preliminary production in March, with 20,235,596 barrels. Midland ranked second, with 17,514,942 barrels, Upton was third, with 7,866,736 barrels, Loving was fourth, with 7,395,973 barrels, Reeves was fifth, with 6,406,708 barrels, Karnes was sixth, with 5,980,867 barrels, Howard was seventh, with 5,760,904 barrels, Reagan was eighth, with 5,597,650 barrels, Andrews was ninth, with 4,590,526 barrels, and Glasscock

Dive Brief: Nuclear industry watchdogs and advocates alike worry that President Trump’s abrupt firing of Commissioner Christopher Hanson from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hinder ongoing NRC reforms and threaten Trump’s promise of an American nuclear renaissance. Hanson’s dismissal opens a vacancy on the five-member Commission, which requires three members to meet quorum. A second vacancy looms if the U.S. Senate fails to act on Trump’s renomination of Chairman David Wright by July 1.  The move comes less than a month after Trump issued four executive orders aimed at speeding up reactor approvals, expanding the U.S. nuclear supply chain, restructuring the NRC itself and adding 300 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2050. Dive Insight: In a public statement, Hanson described his termination late on June 13 as “without cause, contrary to existing law and longstanding precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointees.” Hanson has not yet taken legal action to challenge his dismissal or indicated whether he plans to do so. The U.S. Supreme Court in a May ruling gave the President broad latitude to dismiss most independent agency appointees without cause. A White House spokesperson told National Public Radio that Trump “reserves the right to remove employees within his own executive branch who exert his executive authority” and that “[a]ll organizations are more effective when leaders are rowing in the same direction.” The spokesperson did not indicate what prompted Hanson’s dismissal. NRC is currently reviewing construction permit applications for grid-connected advanced nuclear reactors in Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming; and respective operating license applications from Holtec International and Constellation Energy to restart the 800-MW Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan and 835-MW Crane Clean Energy Center in Pennsylvania. With more than 30 advanced reactor designs in pre-application engagement, its docket is all but certain to grow. Industry groups and

Two supertankers, each capable of hauling about 2 million barrels of crude, headed through the Hormuz shipping strait at the mouth of the Persian gulf, having performed U-turns in the past 24 hours. On Sunday, the Coswisdom Lake and South Loyalty entered the waterway and abruptly changed course, according to vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. After a pause, both then headed back through Hormuz. One was almost through and the other entering it, signals from each showed on Monday. The two vessels’ movements into the world’s most important oil-producing region come as shipbrokers and others in the oil tanker market report a cautious willingness to enter the stretch of water that’s pivotal to the global oil trade. Separately, Greece’s shipping ministry warned on Sunday that the country’s owners should think twice about Hormuz transit and instead head to a safe port.  While neither tanker is Greek, the communication from Athens underscored an initial wariness about going through an area that handles about a fifth of the world’s oil. Greece is the owner of the world’s largest tanker fleet by transportation capacity. Coswisdom Lake is managed by Cosco Shipping Energy and South Loyalty by Sinokor Merchant Marine, according to industry databases. Both are very large crude carriers, or VLCCs. Neither company immediately responded to emailed requests for comment. There remain examples of wariness. Two large large Japanese shipping companies said they will cut exposure to the strait, an unavoidable searoute any vessel entering the Persian Gulf. 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.

Molly Podolefsky is a managing director at Clarum Advisors. Investment uncertainty is spurring conversations in strategy sessions and boardrooms across our industry. Utility executives find themselves at the nexus of sweeping geopolitical, policy and market change, compounding uncertainty around investments in grid expansion. Inflation, tariffs, shifting global supply chains and extreme weather combined with explosive demand growth are increasing utilities’ risk exposure beyond business as usual. Massive levels of investment are needed to secure clean, affordable, reliable energy to satisfy increased demands due to ongoing electrification, data centers and hyperscalers, and industrial customers onshoring their plants. Utilities must contend with unprecedented levels of uncertainty as they decide which investments to make and are faced with very long lead times to build new generation, transmission and distribution assets. Utilities must consider significant regulatory, political and environmental barriers to asset development which could slow roll-out, negatively impacting budgets. Tariffs and bottlenecks in global supply chains may delay generation build-out, worsening capacity constraints and increasing cost. Insufficient data and imprecise market forecasts make it difficult for utilities to anticipate data center and hyperscaler growth, increasing the risk of over-building generation resources. At the same time, by not acting aggressively, utilities jeopardize their ability to meet customer demand. Today we often hear “all of the above” proposed as the answer to exponential demand growth. While there’s an element of truth in this, a more nuanced approach, given geopolitical and economic uncertainty, entails considering all options but prioritizing and implementing low-risk, high-reward investment strategies first. Against this backdrop, behind-the-meter flexibility tops the list of no-regret investment strategies utilities should consider under uncertainty. In a recent article for Public Utilities Fortnightly, Clarum Advisors proposed a framework for de-risking investment under uncertainty. Three key themes inform the framework: Investing in the systems we need, independence from uncertain