WASHINGTON – The Department of Energy (DOE) today announced new actions to increase accountability and promote responsible stewardship of American taxpayer dollars. In a Secretarial Memorandum entitled, “Ensuring Responsibility for Financial Assistance,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright outlined DOE’s policy for evaluating financial assistance on a case-by-case basis to identity waste of taxpayer dollars, protect America’s national security and advance President Trump’s commitment to unleash affordable, reliable and secure energy for the American people.  “Over the past 110 days, the Energy Department has been hard at work reviewing the billions of dollars that were rushed out the door, particularly in the final days of the Biden administration, and what we have found is concerning,” said Secretary Wright. “With this process, the Department will ensure we are doing our due diligence, utilizing taxpayer dollars to generate the largest possible benefit to the American people and safeguarding our national security. Any reputable business would have a process in place for evaluating spending and investments before money goes out the door, and the American people deserve no less from their federal government.” To comply with the Secretary’s memorandum, the DOE has begun requesting additional information needed to evaluate 179 awards. These awards total over $15 billion in financial assistance. DOE is prioritizing large-scale commercial projects that require more detailed information from the awardees for the initial phase of this review, but this process may extend to other DOE program offices as the reviews progress. Full Policy Memorandum is below: Secretarial Policy on Ensuring Responsibility for Financial Assistance It is the policy of the Department of Energy (DOE) to ensure that financial assistance award recipients and the individual projects are, among other things, financially sound and economically viable, aligned with national and economic security interests, and consistent with Federal law and this Administration’s policies and priorities

Oil fell for a second day after President Donald Trump said the US and Iran are getting closer to a deal regarding Tehran’s nuclear program, a move that could unleash more supplies onto a market that is rapidly approaching a glut. Brent fell more than 2% to settle below $65. US crude futures also slid. If all sanctions on Iran are lifted, a flood of crude could hit global markets, analysts estimated. The development adds further gloom to a market that is already swimming in additional supplies after OPEC+ revived output at a faster pace than anticipated and trade talks between the US and major consuming nations cloud the demand outlook. “Trump wants a deal with Iran as he continues to pursue lower oil prices,” Vikas Dwivedi, Macquarie’s global oil and gas strategist, said in an interview. “The conversation is trending towards a deal that could be reached as soon as this year.” Dwivedi expects that an agreement could boost oil supplies between 200,000 and 300,000 barrels a day. Already, Iranian oil exports have grown, reaching around 1.7 million barrels a day in April, he added. Though Trump told reporters in Doha that a deal was close, his latest rhetoric was more optimistic than that of Iran. Its lead negotiator, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, on Wednesday urged the US to come to the next round of Oman-mediated talks with a “more realistic” approach. The date and location for those is yet to be decided. “In less than 24 hours, the narrative has shifted from the US imposing new sanctions on Iran to growing speculation that a diplomatic breakthrough may be within reach,” said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst at A/S Global Risk Management. “If a deal is concluded, it would increase the likelihood of a significant oversupply later this year,

Global oil demand growth will slow during the remainder of 2025 after a robust first quarter due to “economic headwinds,” the International Energy Agency said. After increasing 990,000 barrels a day year-on-year between January and March, the rate of consumption growth will decelerate to a “subdued” 650,000 barrels a day over the rest of the year, the agency said in its monthly report. It also downgraded the outlook for US shale oil production due to lower crude prices. “The first three months of the year will likely remain comfortably 2025’s strongest quarter,” said the Paris-based IEA, which advises major economies. “Signs of a slowdown in global oil demand growth may already be emerging.” Faltering consumption threatens a further blow to oil prices, which briefly crashed to a four-year low last month as President Donald Trump launched a global trade war and OPEC+ announced plans to surge production. Brent futures have recovered slightly to near $65 a barrel as some of those trade fears abated. “We are seeing clear signs the global economy is slowing and oil demand growth is slowing,” Toril Bosoni, head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets division, said in a Bloomberg television interview in Paris. “Increased trade uncertainty is expected to weigh on the world economy and, by extension, oil demand,” according to the report. Data on oil deliveries in emerging economies, particularly China and India, has been weaker than expected. The slump is taking its toll on oil producers, prompting the IEA to downgrade projections for the US shale industry for a second month, including a sharp 190,000 barrel-a-day revision for 2026. Despite the downturn for American drillers, growth in new supplies worldwide will still exceed the expansion of demand this year and next, creating a global surplus. Inventories will swell by as much as

It is widely accepted that the Energy Profits Levy (EPL) harms oil and gas companies. But does it also hurt floating wind projects? That was the suggestion by Cerulean Winds head of Scotland Laura Jarvie at the All-Energy conference in Glasgow this week. Cerulean is working on three offshore sites to build 3 GW of capacity, with the option to double this. “We absolutely need oil and gas to be here,” Jarvie said. This ensures supply security for the country, but also provides offtake demand for Cerulean’s plans. EPL impact “Let’s incentivise oil and gas to stay,” she said. A longer-term view from hydrocarbon producers would support the “electrification journey, which supports scale and phased floating offshore wind in the UK and capture the market.” Floating offshore projects need all those things “and oil and gas to be here.” Oil and gas companies will not spend “material amounts of money on brownfield modifications”, such as floating wind offtake, when faced with the EPL impact. Oil and gas producers want “long-term fiscal policy”, Jarvie said. “Our project is 50 years plus. Oil and gas [companies], the ones that are going to consider electrification, need that long-term certainty. They need an answer and they need that to be long term.” Other factors are at play where oil and gas producers want to reduce risk. Jarvie said such clients “need to know they can just connect without relying on anyone else”. Integration plans Indeed, the oil and gas industry has helped develop the floating wind supply chain. Aberdeen is a centre of “global excellence for subsea”, Jarvie continued. “We have the skills, we have the people, we have the yards, we have the technology. The sad thing is that if we don’t move now, we will miss out.” “We’re not wrestling with oil and gas for space,” she explained. “We want to be as close as possible to infrastructure. Proximity is key.” Scottish Renewables’ Mark Richardson agreed that offshore wind did not develop

Dive Brief: All regions of the North American electric grid are expected to have sufficient resources under normal operating and weather conditions this summer, but some may face supply shortfall risks during periods of extreme heat, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Wednesday in its annual 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment. Peak demand across NERC’s 23 assessment areas is forecast to increase by 10 GW since summer 2024, “more than double the increase from 2023 to 2024,” NERC said in a news release. Data centers, electrification, and industrial growth are driving demand higher. The addition of solar, wind and battery resources, frequently referred to as inverter-based resources, or IBRs, is also creating risks, the assessment states, as they have been known to trip offline during grid disturbances. NERC plans to issue an alert in the next month regarding modeling deficiencies and technical requirements to integrate more IBRs into bulk power system, officials said. Dive Insight: New solar, wind and batteries resources are helping to meet rapidly increasing load growth. Those additions offset generator retirements, but the rise in variable IBRs also injects “complexity and energy limitations” into the system, NERC said. “While we’re adding a lot more resources — solar, batteries and other emerging technologies — the pace and performance of that build-out doesn’t yet fully align with the reliability needs of a rapidly electrifying economy,” John Moura, NERC’s director of reliability assessments and performance analysis, told reporters during a discussion of the analysis. “That said, there are some encouraging signs this summer. It’s a welcome contrast to what we’ve seen during winter seasons,” Moura added. He noted that solar and batteries tend to underperform during colder months, and fuel supply limitations, especially for natural gas, create “far more serious risks.” The Midcontinent Independent System Operator region has less supply capacity than it did last

U.S. officials have discovered undisclosed communication devices on the power inverters of some Chinese-manufactured solar panels, Reuters reported today based on anonymous sources within the federal government.  The inverters are part of the hardware package connecting solar arrays to the power grid. The package includes communication devices so technicians can monitor performance and have remote access for maintenance. These devices are disclosed in what’s called a software bill of materials – a listing of the components that comprise the package. The communication devices uncovered by the government are considered rogue because they’re undisclosed.  These devices “provide additional, undocumented communication channels that could allow firewalls to be circumvented remotely, with potentially catastrophic consequences,” Reuters reported the sources as saying.  Inverters are also included in other types of energy hardware, including batteries and heat pumps, and officials have found undisclosed devices in some of those as well.  “Over the past nine months, undocumented communication devices, including cellular radios, have … been found in some batteries from multiple Chinese suppliers,” the report said. Security risk Chinese companies are the biggest manufacturers of power inverters, used by manufacturers of solar panels, wind turbines and other types of renewable power components around the world.  The devices raise security concerns because Chinese companies are required by law to cooperate with their government’s intelligence agencies, giving those agencies control over Chinese-made inverters that connect to foreign grids, security experts told Reuters.  That could enable the Chinese government to skirt firewalls and switch off the inverters remotely, or change their settings, destabilizing power grids, damaging energy infrastructure and triggering blackouts, the Reuters report said.  “That effectively means there is a built-in way to physically destroy the grid,” one of the unnamed sources told Reuters.  One such incident occurred in November, when solar power inverters in the U.S. and