Thursday, 6 August 2026

State Power Investment Corp (SPIC) sent 3,750 tonnes of green ammonia from Lianyungang, China, to South Korea on July 28, 2026, which the company called a global record for the largest single-batch export of green ammonia, according to pv magazine.

The cargo left Lianyungang, in the northeastern province of Jiangsu, pv magazine reported.

The plant behind the shipment entered commercial operation in July 2025, according to the same report. It draws on 800 MW of dedicated renewable capacity.

Design throughput is 32,000 tons of green hydrogen and 180,000 tons of green ammonia a year, pv magazine reported. On that basis, the single batch shipped to South Korea represents a small fraction of one year of nameplate ammonia output.

Dajin Heavy Industry has handed over KING TWO, the second 40,000 DWT heavy deck carrier in its KING series, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. The company, described by the outlet as a China-based manufacturer of offshore wind foundations, developed and built the series itself.

The vessel measures 239.8 meters in overall length with a beam of 51 meters, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported. Its cargo deck covers 12,000 square metres and the ship has a range of 16,000 nautical miles.

Those dimensions target a specific cargo class. The carrier is designed to move ultra-large offshore structures, including monopiles, jackets and floating foundations for 15-25 MW offshore wind turbines, on long-distance heavy-lift runs, per the same report.

A third unit follows shortly. KING THREE is scheduled for delivery by the end of September 2026, which would put all three KING heavy deck carriers into service during the year, Offshore Engineer OEDigital said.

Battery-electric vehicles took a record 27.5 per cent of the UK passenger car market in July, with registrations up 44.5 per cent year on year, according to electrive.

The overall market grew as well. The UK registered 156,571 new passenger cars during the month, an increase of 11.7 per cent on the same month a year earlier, electrive reported.

Vans posted the sharper move. Battery-electric van registrations climbed 74.1 per cent year on year in July, taking BEVs to a record 14.7 per cent of the light commercial vehicle market, according to electrive. Across the first seven months of the year, battery-electric vans held 10.6 per cent of van registrations, still short of the 24 per cent share required under the UK's ZEV mandate for light commercial vehicles.

Plug-in hybrids also gained. PHEV registrations rose 33.6 per cent year on year, lifting the segment to 14.9 per cent of the passenger car market, electrive reported.

The car-side gap to policy remains wide. The SMMT expects battery-electric vehicles to reach 27.4 per cent of total new car registrations across the year, up slightly from its earlier forecast of 26.8 per cent but below the ZEV mandate target of 33 per cent, according to electrive.

SMMT Chief Executive Mike Hawes tied the monthly record to spending by carmakers rather than underlying demand. "July's record EV performance is a great achievement, reflecting the industry's huge investment in zero-emission mobility," Hawes said, adding that "that progress cannot be sustained if manufacturers continue haemorrhaging billions in EV discounts, distorting demand to avoid even steeper penalties".

Kempower has finished its first UK electric vehicle charging project paid for through leasing partner DLL, with the hardware installed at a forecourt in Bedfordshire, according to electrive.

The site at Astwick service station runs four Kempower Double Satellite chargers, electrive reported, giving a total of eight CCS2 charging points. Each connected vehicle can draw charging capacities of up to 400 kW, according to electrive.

The project marks the first UK installation financed under the arrangement between the charger maker and its leasing partner. Leasing shifts the upfront hardware cost away from the site operator, an approach the two companies have been pushing at forecourt locations.

Kempower and DLL set up the financing partnership in 2024 to back the rollout of DC fast charging infrastructure across Europe, electrive reported. The Bedfordshire forecourt is the first UK site delivered under that structure.

California has launched MyFirstEV, a financial incentive program aimed at supporting electric vehicle adoption, CleanTechnica reported. Fourteen manufacturers are taking part, according to CleanTechnica.

The rationale, as CleanTechnica described it, was to lift EV adoption again after it dropped when the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress ended the federal EV tax credit prematurely.

New models of solar inverters and battery storage equipment assembled outside the country will not receive certification unless they satisfy fresh national security criteria, ESS News reported, after the US Federal Communications Commission tightened the rules covering grid-connected power electronics.

Already-authorized hardware stays on the market. An FCC clarification cited by ESS News confirmed the measure reaches only new equipment authorizations, and certified foreign-made inverters do not have to be pulled.

What decides an application is where the unit is finally put together, not who owns the manufacturer, according to ESS News. Any inverter or storage model with final assembly abroad must clear the security criteria before certification.

The FCC's argument centers on the communications layer inside smart inverters. Wireless links and remote firmware updates could let foreign actors change how equipment operates or shut off solar installations from a distance, with consequences for critical infrastructure, the commission said, per ESS News.

Domestic manufacturers supply about 7% of the inverter market, ESS News reported, leaving foreign suppliers with the remaining 93%.

A Department of Energy assessment earlier in the year looked at 30 Chinese-made inverters and turned up no conclusive evidence of hidden malicious hardware, ESS News reported. The certification block rests instead on what the devices can do remotely once connected.

Since the restriction applies only to new authorizations, installed fleets and previously certified models can still be sold. The pressure falls on updated equipment: each new abroad-assembled inverter or storage model has to meet the security requirements first.

Swedish developer OX2 has acquired two standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) projects in Italy's Puglia region from Hanwha Energy Europe, each rated at 100 MW/400 MWh, according to ESS News.

Both sites sit in Lecce province in southern Puglia, ESS News reported. Construction is scheduled to start in the second quarter of 2027, with commercial operations expected by the end of 2028.

The purchase adds to a portfolio OX2 has assembled since it entered the Italian market in 2021. ESS News put the developer's Italian pipeline at 1.5 GW, split between roughly 750 MW of solar, 650 MW of standalone battery storage and 100 MW of onshore wind.

Storage therefore accounts for the second-largest slice of that pipeline behind solar, on the figures reported by ESS News. The two Lecce assets carry a four-hour duration at full rated power.

Ørsted's Old 300 Storage project, a 250 MW/500 MWh battery built with Tesla Megapacks, is now supporting the Texas grid, according to Electrek.

The site sits in Needville, southwest of Houston, and is fully connected to the ERCOT grid, Electrek reported. At full output the battery energy storage system can discharge 250 MW for two hours.

Old 300 Storage shares a location with Ørsted's 430 MW Old 300 Solar, but Electrek reported the battery and the solar farm operate independently of each other.

For Ørsted, the addition lifts the company's operating US onshore portfolio to around 6 GW, according to Electrek. The same 500 MWh counts toward Tesla's stationary storage deployments.

Tesla says it has more than 58 GWh of industrial storage systems running in over 65 countries. Its current two-hour Megapack configuration delivers about 1.9 MW of power and 3.85 MWh of storage per unit, per Electrek.

Transocean logged USD 966 million in contract drilling revenues for the second quarter of 2026, with revenue efficiency at 97.0%, according to a results release carried by GlobeNewswire.

The quarter delivered net income of USD 170 million, equal to USD 0.04 per diluted share. Adjusted EBITDA reached USD 312 million, a 32.2% margin.

Operating activities produced USD 236 million of net cash. Capital spending of USD 24 million left free cash flow at USD 212 million.

Five fixtures signed since the May 2026 fleet status report brought in roughly USD 292 million of incremental backlog, with the weighted average dayrate across them near USD 461,000.

Backlog totalled roughly USD 6.7 billion on August 5, 2026. A further USD 1.0 billion tied to Equinor work sits outside that total pending license partner approvals.

For the third quarter, the driller guided contract drilling revenues to a range of USD 920 million to USD 960 million. Full-year 2026 guidance runs from USD 3,900 million to USD 3,975 million.

Chief executive Keelan Adamson said the company expects rising demand for its highest specification rigs, with utilization for deepwater and harsh environment assets "projected to move well into the 90% range during 2027".

Iran and Oman have reached the "final stages" of an agreement to establish a commercial route in the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran's state media said Wednesday, as reported by Semafor.

Analysts cautioned that the arrangement was unlikely to settle the broader disputes driving the conflict, according to Semafor.

The negotiations sit against a standing threat from Tehran to strike Gulf nations if Washington launches new strikes, Reuters reported.

The route talks are described by Tehran's state media as close to conclusion, though the terms of the arrangement were set out only as being in their final stages.

European countries have cut tens of billions of euros of fossil fuel imports thanks to growth in wind and solar generation, according to CleanTechnica.

The outlet points to the 75th edition of the Statistical Review of World Energy, which carries a chart showing how much money individual countries have saved by switching to wind. CleanTechnica describes the chart as sitting eleven pages into the publication.

The framing puts the displaced import bill, rather than installed capacity, at the centre of the case for wind and solar build-out across Europe.

Ansaldo Energia and RINA have agreed to build out Italy's nuclear supply chain by guiding companies through a structured certification pathway, World Nuclear News reported. Ansaldo Energia is an Italian power technology firm; RINA works in certification and engineering.

The two companies frame the pathway as a way for suppliers to seize opportunities in what World Nuclear News describes as a rapidly growing global nuclear market.

The target audience is not the existing nuclear vendor base. According to World Nuclear News, the initiative is aimed primarily at companies that are not currently active in the nuclear sector but hold transferable industrial capabilities, with the stated goal of widening and strengthening the national industrial base.

The division of labour is set out explicitly. RINA will accompany firms through certification and qualification, while Ansaldo Energia contributes sector industrial expertise, shares market requirements, and promotes initiatives backing certification through financial support from institutions and public instruments for internationalisation and industrial development, per World Nuclear News.

The commercial move lands against an unfinished legislative process. World Nuclear News reported that Italy's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, approved a bill presented by the Meloni government paving the way for the country's return to the use of nuclear energy. That bill now goes to the upper house, the Senate, for a vote.

Certification and qualification are the gating requirements for any component or service supplier seeking nuclear work, which places the Ansaldo Energia and RINA arrangement ahead of the Senate decision rather than behind it. Industrial firms in adjacent sectors, from heavy fabrication to instrumentation, are the pool the two companies say they intend to draw from.

Technip Energies has signed a strategic framework agreement with EDF covering execution, construction management and delivery of EDF's EPR2 reactor construction programme, World Nuclear News reported.

The proposed programme covers six new EPR2 reactors, with an option for eight more to follow, according to World Nuclear News.

The first three pairs are proposed for the Penly, Gravelines and Bugey nuclear power plant sites, in that order.

World Nuclear News reported that the target commissioning date for the first reactor at Penly is now 2038, with subsequent units entering service at intervals of up to 18 months.

The EPR2 is a pressurised water reactor project developed by EDF and Framatome.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has granted Amazon subsidiary Zoox an exemption allowing it to charge for rides in purpose-built robotaxis that carry no steering wheel and no pedals, according to electrive. It is the first such exemption NHTSA has issued for a purpose-built vehicle of this kind.

The permission is not open-ended. electrive reports the exemption is capped at a maximum of 2,500 vehicles per year and runs for the next two years.

Zoox intends to switch on fares in Las Vegas next month as its first commercial step, according to electrive.

The company arrives at that point with a large operating record built entirely on unpaid trips. electrive reports that since the launch of the free service in Las Vegas and the Zoox Explorers Programme in San Francisco, more than half a million passengers have been carried, all free of charge under permits covering public testing of the autonomous ride service.

NHTSA is also moving on the rulebook that will govern vehicles of this type. The agency has announced a three-year partnership with the SAE Industry Technologies Consortia (ITC), funding a five-million-dollar consortium tasked with establishing a unified safety standard, according to electrive.

The pairing of a vehicle-count ceiling with a fixed two-year window means the commercial phase and the standards work run on overlapping clocks: the consortium has three years to produce a common safety benchmark, while Zoox's authority to sell rides in a steering-wheel-free vehicle expires after two. Until a unified standard exists, exemptions remain the route to market for vehicles built without conventional driver controls.

Diamondback Energy averaged 1,018 MBOE/d in the second quarter of 2026, the first time company output has cleared one million barrels of oil equivalent per day, according to a letter to stockholders issued through GlobeNewswire. Oil alone averaged 525 MBO/d over the quarter, the company said in its second quarter results release.

The production step-up came with a guidance revision. Diamondback raised its full-year 2026 oil target to 522+ MBO/d from 520+ MBO/d and its total production target to 1,000+ MBOE/d from 972+ MBOE/d, while leaving full-year cash capital expenditures unchanged at roughly USD 3.9 billion, per the results release.

Spending in the quarter itself totaled USD 996 million in cash capital expenditures. Free Cash Flow and Adjusted Free Cash Flow each came in at USD 2.3 billion, the company reported. Net income attributable to Diamondback Energy was USD 1,882 million.

That cash went partly to the balance sheet. Total debt fell by about USD 1.3 billion quarter over quarter to USD 12.8 billion, with net debt down about USD 1.6 billion to USD 12.3 billion, according to the release.

On the shareholder-return side, the Board doubled Diamondback's share repurchase authorization in July to USD 16.0 billion from USD 8.0 billion, the company disclosed.

Holding capital flat while lifting the total production target implies the higher volumes are being delivered without additional budgeted outlay, based on the guidance and spending figures the company disclosed.

House Oversight Committee Democrats have written to the Treasury, Energy and State departments seeking an accounting of the USD 13 billion that Trump said the US has collected from selling Venezuelan oil, Semafor reported.

Treasury has already given the panel's Democrats a partial answer. The department told them it "custodies these funds for the benefit of the Venezuelan people" and would release the money for "approved purposes," according to Semafor.

A US official described the custodial arrangement in operational terms, saying the US government has been working with the Rodriguez government since January to disperse funds for official government expenditures such as payroll.

The volumes behind that revenue have risen sharply. Venezuela's oil exports have increased by 46% since January, Energy spokesperson Ben Dietderich told Semafor last week. Production over the same stretch is up 27%, according to Dietderich.

The letters put three departments on the record over the same pool of money: Treasury as the stated custodian, Energy as the agency citing the export and production figures, and State.

RWE's Lingen plant has sent its first batch of hydrogen certified as a renewable fuel of non-biological origin (RFNBO) through a dedicated 120 km pipeline to the Marl Chemical Park operated by Evonik, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The outlet described the delivery as Europe's first integrated large-scale chain linking production, transmission and offtake.

Production at Lingen runs on two 100 MW proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysers supplied by ITM Power, with Linde Engineering handling integration, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. The same report said the units are feeding renewable hydrogen directly into the dedicated pipeline running to Marl.

The shipment starts full-scale operation of the GET H2 Nukleus system in Germany, bringing large-scale green hydrogen production, regulated transmission and industrial offtake into a single chain, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

Companies have paid to reserve nearly 6 GW of transport capacity on Germany's hydrogen core network, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The bookings stood at that level by the end of July, spread across the network, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. That is double the volume reserved in spring, according to the same report.

The backbone the reservations apply to runs 9,040 km, Hydrogen Fuel News said, and the bookings were placed under a new tariff framework.

New York City will install 600 additional curbside charging points for electric vehicles on its PlugNYC network over the next three years, electrive reported.

The rollout takes public curbside Level 2 charging points from 88 to nearly 700, according to electrive.

Demand at the existing sites is the argument for the build-out. The city's 88 Level 2 curbside points have run at utilisation rates above 70 per cent, and some locations approach 99 per cent occupancy, electrive reported.

Curbside chargers are not the only piece. NYC DOT is deploying 92 fast charging points and a further 180 Level 2 points at municipal parking facilities across the city, according to electrive.

Responsibilities are split between two public bodies. The New York Power Authority will procure the equipment and oversee construction; NYC DOT will handle operation and maintenance of the network, electrive reported.

Nuvora Energy has finished a pre-feasibility study for a 300 MWth prismatic high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) paired with an integrated hydrogen production island, according to Hydrogen Fuel News.

The design links the reactor to a solid oxide electrolysis cell (SOEC) hydrogen island, Hydrogen Fuel News reported. High-temperature gas-cooled reactors deliver process heat at temperatures that suit solid oxide electrolysis, which draws part of the energy for splitting water as heat rather than electricity.

DBD International reviewed the study and identified no immediate technical or regulatory roadblocks, per the same report.

The work stops short of a funding or construction decision. Hydrogen Fuel News said the project has not reached the stage of securing financing or starting construction. Pre-feasibility studies sit early in the nuclear development sequence, ahead of full feasibility work, licensing submissions and any final investment decision.

The 300 MWth rating describes thermal output rather than electrical capacity, the relevant metric for a plant whose primary product is heat routed to an electrolysis process.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued an emergency order to mitigate the risk of blackouts for families and businesses in Guam, according to US DOE Energy.gov.

The order permits the Guam Power Authority (GPA) to operate specified generation units to meet anticipated electricity demand and maintain reliability, US DOE Energy.gov said.

GPA has limited generation options to meet demand because of constraints that include, but are not limited to, the Ukudu steam turbine going offline for emergency repairs, per the same announcement.

The order takes effect at 10:00 AM Guam Standard Time on August 6, 2026, and runs through 11:59 PM Guam Standard Time on November 4, 2026, according to US DOE Energy.gov.

Roughly 800 workers represented by United Steelworkers Local 7-1 have gone four months without pay at BP's Whiting refinery in Indiana, locked out with no clear indication of when they will return, according to Grist.

The lockout order came after 98% of Local 7-1 members voted to reject what BP called its last, best, and final offer, Grist reported.

The plant is the largest inland oil refinery in North America and processes approximately 440,000 barrels of crude oil per day, according to Grist. Its scale gives the dispute a direct line to fuel markets in the surrounding region.

That link was visible in April, when a power interruption at the facility pushed regional gasoline prices up by 40 to 80 cents per gallon, Grist reported.

BP announced quarterly profits of USD 5.7 billion, more than double the previous quarter, according to Grist.

The company defended its bargaining position. "Our proposals are not unique or novel," BP spokesperson Cesar Rodriguez wrote, adding that "Most of what we are seeking has already been tested and implemented elsewhere".

Researchers at State Grid Henan Electric Power Company in China have proposed a method for sizing and siting distributed energy storage systems that uses a Stackelberg game framework, according to ESS News.

Tested on a 33-node distribution network, the approach cut the load fluctuation rate from 25.98% to 14.25%, a reduction of 11.73 percentage points, ESS News reported.

The optimized storage configuration carried an average total cost of CNY 1.8187 million across a five-year planning period, per the same account. The constraint satisfaction rate reached 99.8%.

A Stackelberg game models a sequential decision structure in which a leader commits first and followers respond, a framing used in power-system planning where a network operator and storage owners hold different objectives.

The work appeared in the journal Results in Engineering under the title "Optimal allocation of distributed energy storage systems based on the Stackelberg game," ESS News said.

The Philippines' Department of Energy will dedicate its ninth green energy auction to solar projects combined with agriculture and aquaculture, according to pv magazine.

The department is targeting publication of the GEA-9 Terms of Reference in the fourth quarter of 2026, pv magazine reported. That document sets the terms bidders must meet, and its release would put the agrivoltaics and aquavoltaics round on a defined timetable.

GEA-9 sits at the end of a block of four rounds. In February the Department of Energy said it would hold GEA-6 through GEA-9 over the following two years, part of a broader plan to auction 25 GW of renewables by 2035, according to pv magazine.

A separate round in the sequence turns to territory the main grid does not reach. The department said an off-grid auction will target 20 islands, with the longlist not yet finalized, pv magazine reported.

The solar base the auctions build on remains modest. The Philippines added 899 MW of solar in 2025, lifting cumulative capacity to 3,892 MW, according to International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) figures cited by pv magazine. Reaching the 25 GW auction target therefore requires volumes several times the current installed fleet.

Pairing panels with farmland and fish ponds addresses the land question directly: dual-use sites let the same hectare carry crops or aquaculture alongside generation. Applying that design across a national auction round, rather than to single pilot projects, is what distinguishes GEA-9 from the earlier rounds in the series.

Forty-five nations have yet to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC), according to the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) report on its 7-10 July 2026 meeting, published this week and covered by Climate Home News.

That leaves about a quarter of the countries signed up to the Paris Agreement in breach of its rules, 18 months after the February 2025 deadline, Climate Home News reported.

Twelve of the laggards ignored repeated attempts by the committee to establish why they had not produced a plan, the report said.

The missing filings are not confined to small emitters. Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Philippines all rank among the world's 40 largest greenhouse gas emitters and none has an updated NDC, according to Climate Home News.

The backlog has narrowed since the committee last met in March. Ten countries have published NDCs in the interim, among them India, Algeria, Cameroon and Guyana, though the committee itself did not name them.

The PAICC has no authority to sanction governments that miss the deadline. Experts previously told Climate Home News that writing punitive powers into the Paris Agreement was considered controversial enough to have deterred some governments from joining at all.

Finnish developer ecogrid.energy is building its first green energy park in Pori alongside Norwegian data center developer ASP Data Centers, which will own and operate the 300 MW facility, according to pv magazine.

Pori will be the first site to run ecogrid.energy's proprietary hybrid energy management software platform, EMOP, pv magazine reported. The platform is currently optimized for the NordPool energy market.

A second, larger design, referred to as the Raisio model, is scheduled to begin construction in 2030, per pv magazine.

The pairing of generation assets with computing load lands as Finland has withdrawn a fiscal advantage the sector previously held. Data centers have been moved out of the lower industrial tariff and into the higher electricity tax bracket, according to pv magazine.

Ihalainen said Finland's energy system is more than 95% fossil fuel-free, pv magazine reported.

Ireland offers the sharper regulatory precedent. Its data center moratorium was lifted in December 2025 and replaced by a rule that conditions grid connection on operators demonstrating they can cover 80% of their power needs with new onsite generation, according to pv magazine. That threshold makes self-supply, rather than grid access alone, the gating factor for new capacity, and it is the model against which Finnish flexibility-led projects such as Pori are being positioned.

Tonly has put sodium-ion battery electric haul trucks to work at the Tangshan Sanyou limestone mines in China, a deployment Electrek described as a world's first.

The machines are Tonly K120E haul trucks, fitted with a "Haixing" series pack rated at 676 kWh, according to Electrek. That capacity puts the truck battery well above passenger-vehicle scale and into the range typical of heavy mining duty cycles.

Electrek reported the Haixing cells carry an energy density of 165 Wh/kg. Sodium-ion chemistry has historically lagged lithium-ion on that metric, which is why the figure matters for a vehicle class where payload competes directly with pack mass.

Cycle life is the second specification Tonly is leaning on. Electrek put the usable lifespan of the Haixing battery at 8,000 cycles. For a mine truck running repeated short hauls, cycle count rather than range determines how long a pack stays in service before replacement.

The cold-weather case is the operational reason for the chemistry choice. According to Electrek, the trucks are earmarked to work in the coldest regions of northern China, where nighttime temperatures frequently drop to -20°C in areas such as Harbin and Shenyang. Battery performance at sub-zero temperatures is a persistent constraint on electrified heavy equipment in those conditions.

Sodium-ion cells use no lithium and no cobalt, which removes the two inputs that expose battery supply chains to concentrated mining and refining. A commercial deployment in mining duty rather than a pilot fleet is the test that matters for the chemistry, and Tangshan Sanyou is where it is now running.

Indonesia has approved the first phase of its 100 GW solar program and will move to construction with a groundbreaking ceremony, Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Bahlil Lahadalia said, according to pv magazine.

The program splits into two very different builds. Per pv magazine, 80 GW is earmarked for decentralized, small-scale solar paired with battery energy storage systems across 80,000 villages, with the remaining 20 GW built as centralized solar.

The plan was first announced in August 2025, pv magazine reported.

Cost is the immediate constraint. IESR estimated that reaching the goal will require USD 140 billion to USD 210 billion through the first phase investment, according to pv magazine.

The starting base is small relative to the target. Indonesia passed 1 GW of installed solar in 2025, with total capacity reaching 1.49 GW, pv magazine reported.

Rural electrification is the other half of the story. The Lisdes village program has reached more than 1,400 villages of around 11,000 without electricity, according to pv magazine.

Gran Tierra Energy Inc. has signed a definitive share sale and purchase agreement to sell its oil business in Colombia and Ecuador to Établissements Maurel & Prom S.A. for total consideration of USD 1.33 billion, according to the company's announcement carried by GlobeNewswire.

The assets changing hands produced roughly 29,000 barrels of oil per day on a first half 2026 average working-interest basis before royalties, Gran Tierra said.

The seller expects total net cash proceeds of approximately USD 315 million from the deal. Of that, approximately USD 250 million is due in cash at closing, with the remaining USD 65 million payable 364 days later under an unsecured note issued by the divested business, according to the announcement.

Gran Tierra described Maurel & Prom as a Paris-listed international oil and natural gas exploration and production company majority owned by PT Pertamina Internasional Eksplorasi dan Produksi, a subsidiary of Indonesia's national energy company PT Pertamina (Persero).

The company frames the sale as a repositioning around fully financed growth plans in Canada and Azerbaijan, and says the transaction supports a meaningful return of capital to stockholders.

Syntropic Power and UNIGRID Inc. have formed a strategic partnership to commercialize UNIGRID's sodium chromium oxide (NaCrO2, or NCO) battery technology in North America and to establish a pathway to U.S. production, the companies said in a statement distributed by GlobeNewswire.

The two firms plan to deploy 1 GWh of NCO-based energy storage in 2027, according to the announcement.

Syntropic will lead system development, certification, U.S. module assembly and integration, with a stated priority on establishing a non-FEOC-aligned supply pathway by the end of 2027. The term refers to sourcing that avoids foreign entities of concern, a qualification that governs eligibility under U.S. clean energy tax credit rules.

On cell performance, the companies cited independent testing at RIT of UNIGRID's 210Ah NCO cells. That testing measured 216-218Ah of discharge capacity against the 210Ah nameplate rating, cell-level round-trip energy efficiency of at least 97.9%, and 2.3% capacity loss between the C/10 and 1C discharge rates.

UNIGRID's own cycle life testing at full depth of discharge has passed 1,000 cycles with more than 99% of capacity retained, the release said.

Sodium-ion chemistry competes with lithium iron phosphate on the basis of raw material availability rather than energy density, and the supply-chain framing in the announcement is explicit: the partnership pairs a domestic assembly and certification role with a deployment target and a dated sourcing milestone. The 1 GWh figure is a plan rather than a contracted order book.

Round-trip efficiency and rate performance are the two metrics that determine how a cell behaves in daily-cycling grid applications, where losses compound across thousands of charge and discharge events. The RIT numbers cover cell-level behavior, not full system performance after integration into modules and enclosures.

Delhi had installed roughly 446MW of rooftop solar as of June 2026, short of the 750MW target set under the Delhi Solar Energy Policy 2023, according to a study by IEEFA and Ember.

The two organisations concluded that Delhi's power sector is transition-ready but requires rooftop solar, storage and market enablers to cover rising demand peaks.

On the demand side, IEEFA put Delhi's total energy requirement at 38,482 million units in financial year 2026, around 2.2% of India's total energy requirement.

Peak demand climbed from 7.7GW in FY2023 to 8.7GW in FY2027 by June 2026, a trajectory IEEFA described as effectively managed so far.

Allocated generation capacity stood at about 7,544MW as of June 2026, per the IEEFA-Ember work.

Households dominate the load. Domestic consumers made up more than half of total electricity consumption, which the study said underscores the weight of residential demand in shaping the city's electricity system.

Ford's affordable electric pickup will be called the Fathom and will open at USD 28,350 for the standard-range model, with pre-orders excluding a USD 1,595 delivery fee, according to Electrek.

The truck goes on sale in early 2027 and is the first vehicle built on Ford's new Universal EV Platform, Electrek reported.

On range, the outlet said the Fathom is expected to deliver at least 300 miles, citing Ford's focus on aerodynamics and efficiency. The pre-order price of USD 28,350 applies to the standard-range version, and the USD 1,595 delivery fee sits on top.

Cell chemistry is central to the cost target. Ford will fit prismatic LFP batteries sourced from its BlueOval Battery Park in Michigan, a choice Electrek said is meant to cut costs and maximize interior space.

Charging hardware is integrated rather than adapted: the pickup carries a built-in NACS port, per Electrek.

The Fathom will also be the first vehicle with Apple Maps built in, delivering turn-by-turn directions from real-time data, EV routing and battery preconditioning through the navigation display, according to Electrek.

Volkswagen Tianjin has signed an agreement with Chinese supplier Leadrive Technology to jointly develop silicon carbide power modules for electric vehicles, according to electrive.

The work extends beyond the modules themselves. electrive reported that the collaboration covers power semiconductor modules, electronic control systems and complete electric drive solutions.

The two sides have worked together before. According to electrive, the agreement expands an existing technical partnership between Volkswagen Group and Leadrive that previously focused on electric drive systems and dual-controller solutions for hybrid powertrains, moving the relationship into power electronics.

Leadrive was founded in 2017 and develops power semiconductor modules, motor controllers and integrated power bricks in-house, electrive reported.

The partners did not disclose financial details, production targets or vehicle programmes linked to the memorandum, according to electrive.

The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero opened a consultation on 6 August 2026 on a permitted development right covering ground investigations for electricity network projects, applying to England.

Submissions close at 11:59pm on 4 September 2026, according to the department.

Under the proposal, some low-impact, temporary ground investigations and surveys tied to electricity network projects would proceed without a planning application, subject to a set of conditions and limitations.

The department states the right is intended to cut delays and administrative burden for electricity network developers and for local planning authorities, while keeping environmental safeguards in place.

The Groves low-power test reactor reached criticality at 9:19 p.m. ET on Aug. 5, according to Power Magazine.

Groves is the first reactor under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program to achieve criticality on private land, Power Magazine reported. Power Magazine identified it as the fifth pilot reactor under the program to reach criticality.

California-based Deep Fission said an approval of its safety design confirms that its reactor warrants advancement under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, according to Power Magazine.

The company, which is developing an underground small modular reactor, framed the decision as validation of the design's readiness for the next stage of the pilot program, Power Magazine reported.

Power Magazine identified Deep Fission as based in California.

BMW is hurrying to ramp up production of its new i3 electric sedan after opening orders earlier than planned, with demand running ahead of expectations, according to Electrek.

Assembly is running at BMW Plant Munich in Germany, Electrek reported. The i3 follows the iX3, which entered production at BMW's plant in Debrecen, Hungary.

Orders for the i3 50 xDrive Launch Edition opened in Germany on June 18 at a starting price of EUR 75,340, per Electrek.

The car carries a 108.7 kWh battery and a WLTP range of up to 912 km, or 566 miles, according to the same report. An 800V architecture supports DC fast charging at up to 400 kW, which Electrek said can add close to 250 miles of range in roughly 10 minutes.

Ratings differ by test cycle. The 2027 BMW i3 50 xDrive is rated at an EPA-estimated range of about 440 miles, Electrek reported.

The early order book is what forced the schedule change. BMW opened the order banks ahead of plan and is now accelerating output to match the response.

Saft, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies, has signed a joint agreement with startup Mana Battery to develop anode-free sodium-ion battery technology, ESS News reported.

The deal follows a technical evaluation of Mana Battery that Saft began in 2025, according to ESS News. Mana Battery is pursuing commercialization of a proprietary electrolyte platform alongside its anode-free sodium cell design.

The two companies are targeting defense, aerospace, rail, data center and industrial uninterruptible power supply (UPS) customers with sodium-ion batteries, ESS News reported. That customer list places the partnership in segments where cell safety and cycle performance carry more weight than the lowest cost per kilowatt-hour, rather than in mass-market vehicle or utility-scale storage supply.

Anode-free construction removes the separately manufactured anode from the cell, and sodium-based chemistry substitutes a more widely available raw material for lithium. Both companies describe the batteries they intend to bring to market as safe and high-performance.

ConocoPhillips has appointed Andy O'Brien president and chief executive officer effective September 1, according to World Oil.

Ryan Lance will retire from the CEO role and take the position of executive chair in a transitional capacity, World Oil reported. The changes close out Lance's 14-year tenure as president and CEO.

The company also named Konnie Haynes-Welsh senior vice president and chief financial officer, according to World Oil. She succeeds O'Brien, who held the CFO role before the promotion.

All three appointments take effect on the same date.

The Trump administration issued stop-work orders on all five offshore wind projects under construction in the United States late last year, arguing the turbines could compromise national security, according to Canary Media.

Canary Media reported that national security was the single justification offered for the halt across the five sites.

Experts pushed back on the security claim as soon as it was made, according to Canary Media.

Production from the Orlando Field has ceased permanently, and Atlantic Petroleum said it expects to write down substantially all remaining Orlando-related assets in its forthcoming financial reporting.

Serica said the remedial work needed to restore output is not economically justified because of the proximity to the scheduled closure of the Ninian platform in 2027, according to the GlobeNewswire release. Serica added that no further production from the field is expected.

Atlantic Petroleum still carries an economic interest in the field. That interest runs through royalty and deferred consideration arrangements set up when the company sold its ownership stake in the field in 2017.

The accounting consequence is direct: Atlantic Petroleum expects the carrying value of its Orlando-related assets to fall to a level close to nil. The company described the write-down as a material impairment covering substantially all of what remains on its books from the field.

The royalty and deferred consideration structure Atlantic Petroleum kept after the 2017 disposal depended on continued output at Orlando. With Serica ruling out further production and pointing to the Ninian platform closure date in 2027 as the reason not to fund remedial activity, that residual exposure loses its underlying revenue base.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered a halt to all new data center connections to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid on Aug. 3, holding them until a comprehensive audit is finished, according to Power Magazine.

BloombergNEF (BNEF) put the exposure at 49.8 GW of future data center compute load, or nearly 20% of the U.S. development pipeline, in an Aug. 5 report cited by Power Magazine. The same assessment warned the audit could cost projects up to USD 15 billion.

The order applies to new connection requests rather than existing load, and remains in force until the audit concludes. BNEF framed both the 49.8 GW figure and the cost estimate as potential outcomes of that delay.

A new Helmerich & Payne FlexRig has been booked for appraisal and development drilling in the Beetaloo basin of Australia by Formentera Partners, its operating arm Daly Waters Energy and INPEX Pty Ltd., World Oil reported.

Delivery is anticipated in the second quarter of 2027. Once it is working, the unit will be the third Helmerich & Payne rig running in Australia and the second in the Beetaloo, according to World Oil.

The contract is long term, holding drilling capacity through the end of the decade, and carries an option to extend operations through 2032.

Formentera moved into the basin in 2022 and now holds about 1.9 million net acres of unconventional acreage, World Oil reported.

On the sales side, Formentera, Daly Waters Energy and Tamboran Resources have a long-term supply deal with the Northern Territory government covering 40 MMcfd, with first gas targeted for the third quarter of 2026.

Mexico's government will prohibit hydraulic fracturing in the Tampico-Misantla shale basin, a resource-rich formation lying beneath the eastern states of Veracruz and Tamaulipas, according to World Oil.

President Claudia Sheinbaum announced the decision Thursday during her daily press conference, World Oil reported. She cited the basin's location under a densely populated area with a high concentration of indigenous communities and ample fresh water reserves.

The ruling closes off unconventional drilling in one of the country's shale formations while leaving Mexico heavily dependent on cross-border gas supply. Mexico imports more than 6.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day through pipelines from U.S. shale deposits, equal to around 75% of daily demand, according to World Oil.

Domestic unconventional resources remain largely undeveloped. Mexico holds an estimated 141.5 Tcf of unconventional reserves in shale basins, mostly in the northern part of the country, according to figures from the commission cited by World Oil. Tampico-Misantla sits outside that northern concentration, on the eastern flank of the country.