Wednesday, 2 September 2026

Two U.S. officials told Reuters that oilfields in Venezuela once held by several Chinese companies and one Russian firm are passing to North American Blue Energy Partners, Offshore Engineer OEDigital reported.

Among the 14 fields granted, Chinese operators ran five under an arrangement promoted by then-President Nicolas Maduro, while a Russian company held one, the officials said.

The tally is expected to reach 17 projects across Venezuela under NABEP control, which the company plans to develop and eventually use to send oil to the U.S., according to the OEDigital report.

On the ownership structure, NABEP said operating control of the business stays with the company, with the U.S. government holding rights to a 35% stake and "preferential access" to 20% of output at cost. A further right of first refusal on the remaining 80% of production has been extended to the U.S. Department of State, the White House said.

The field transfers follow Trump's announcement last week, cited by OEDigital, that a partnership with private business had given the U.S. access to some 64 billion barrels of Venezuela's proven oil reserves.

Control of NABEP itself has shifted. Harry Sargeant, the U.S. oil tycoon who previously owned the company, has been succeeded by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt.

Oil prices reached USD 95 a barrel after the US struck Iran on Tuesday, according to Semafor Net Zero. The strikes were retaliation for Tehran targeting American forces in Jordan and the UAE, Semafor Net Zero reported.

The strikes interrupted a weekslong lull in what Semafor Net Zero described as a six-month conflict.

Shipping was hit the day before. Two supertankers carrying Saudi oil were struck on Monday, an event that undermined White House claims that the Strait of Hormuz is safe for navigation, according to Semafor Net Zero.

US President Donald Trump said Iran will be "totally wiped out" if it hits back, Semafor Net Zero reported.

New South Wales has begun examining tariff reform aimed at helping industry use heat as energy, RenewEconomy reported, as the Australian state's decarbonisation effort moves toward harder-to-abate sectors.

The design problem sits in network charges. According to RenewEconomy, those charges do not currently recognise that heat energy storage technologies shift industrial electricity consumption to periods when supply is more available.

Tim Stock, policy head at DEECCW, said a significant amount of work is underway on how energy tariffs can be reformed so that high-temperature heat processes can make use of thermal storage.

The distinction matters for large industrial users, whose bills are shaped by when they draw power from the network rather than only by how much they draw. Where a thermal store allows a plant to charge during hours of higher availability and release heat later, the cost signal in existing network tariffs does not reflect that behaviour. Reforming the tariff is therefore the lever the state is examining, rather than the heat technology itself.

The move tracks a shift in where New South Wales is directing decarbonisation policy, away from the parts of the economy already served by existing measures and toward industrial processes that are more difficult to abate.

New Jersey signed the Garden State Balcony Solar Act into law, becoming the ninth state to legalize plug-in solar, pv magazine reported. The statute does not take effect until March 1, 2027.

That gap gives the state Board of Public Utilities time to implement the law's provisions, according to pv magazine.

Units rated at 400 W or less escape two hurdles under the bill: the UL listing requirement and state code compliance.

Renters and homeowners under association oversight also gain protection. Landlords and homeowners' associations (HOAs) cannot bar portable solar generation devices outright, pv magazine reported, so long as users follow "reasonable restrictions concerning the size, placement, or manner of placement" of the device on the exterior of a premises.

Both of the state's legislative chambers approved the measure unanimously in late June, according to pv magazine.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the UK government's energy department, published a consultation on 2 September 2026 seeking views on whether new technologies could take part in Capacity Market auctions in future.

The department is asking respondents which technologies capable of supporting electricity security of supply could be admitted, according to the consultation summary. Coverage extends across England, Scotland and Wales, with responses due by 11:59pm on 4 October 2026.

This is an annual duty written into the scheme's own rulebook. Under Rule 2.4 of the Capacity Market Rules, the Secretary of State must consult interested parties every year to work out whether any generating technologies are capable of contributing to security of supply.

An emergency order will keep coal-fired generation at the Stanton Energy Center online through November 30, 2026, according to US DOE Energy.gov. The order took effect on September 2, 2026.

Unit 1 at the plant had been slated to enter a premature extended cold shutdown in June 2026, according to US DOE Energy.gov. The order runs for the period from September 2 to November 30.

The intervention follows a wider pattern of retirement reprieves in the United States. More than 17 GW of coal-powered electricity generation were saved from going offline in 2025, according to US DOE Energy.gov.

DOE's Resource Adequacy Report stated that power outages could increase by 100 times in 2030 if the United States continues to take reliable power offline.

Grid links to the Dodecanese, the Cyclades and the northeastern Aegean islands take the biggest share of the Islands Decarbonization Fund, at around EUR 1.1 billion, pv magazine reported.

Revenue from the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) pays for the fund, according to pv magazine.

Generation and batteries form the second spending category, with EUR 977 million set aside, pv magazine reported.

Smaller allocations follow. Dams and reservoirs built for multiple uses draw EUR 200 million, and charging infrastructure for electric vehicles draws EUR 56 million, according to pv magazine.

IPTO has picked Fulgor, a Hellenic Cables subsidiary, to build and lay the high-voltage direct current (HVDC) link running from Corinth on the mainland out to the island of Kos, pv magazine reported.

The Invest in Tomorrow Coalition has named Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee as its first Democratic target, according to Canary Media.

The super PAC arrives at that decision after campaigning against three Republican primary candidates, all of whom lost, Canary Media reported.

Canary Media described McKee's reelection campaign as troubled.