SENATE DEMOCRATS MAKE CASE FOR DOJ ANTITRUST INVESTIGATION OF BIG OIL: As previewed last week by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a group of 23 Democratic senators this morning called on the Department of Justice to investigate oil companies for antitrust violations.
The argument for an investigation: Noting the Federal Trade Commission’s claims that former Pioneer Natural Resources head Scott Sheffield conspired with U.S. producers and OPEC+ to keep prices high, Democrats say that there is grounds for an investigation into oil company price-fixing under the Sherman Act. The lawmakers also write that the collusion with OPEC could serve to enrich adversaries like Iran and Russia.
The lawmakers on the letter that caught our eye: Along with a number of progressives and climate hawks, some vulnerable Senate Democrats also signed the letter, including Sens. Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, and John Fetterman.
The details: In their letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and assistant attorney general for the antitrust division Jonathan Kanter, the Democrats cite data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and gas stations to argue that households have been harmed by high gas prices and an opinion piece from New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman to claim that oil companies have reaped excess profits.
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A RERUN OF 2022? Top Energy Republicans are warning the Biden administration against further tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to bring down gas prices ahead of the election, calling the move a “political tool” that disregards energy and national security implications.
This follows recent statements from the White House signaling it would be willing to release oil from the SPR to tamp down gasoline prices during an expected busy driving season in the summer.
“At the same time that the Biden administration has been mismanaging the SPR for political gain, they have been taking a ‘whole of government approach’ to phase out oil and natural gas development in the United States,” House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman John Barrasso wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
Sound familiar? Republicans have repeatedly gone after the Biden administration for their move to release 180 million barrels from the reserve in 2022, which they argue was planned to lower gas prices before the midterm elections. The release resulted in the reserve falling to the lowest levels it’s been since the late 1980s.
The Energy Department has been slowly refilling the reserve. It currently holds nearly 370 million barrels.
A spokesperson for the Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A REVERSAL ON RECA: Speaker Mike Johnson delayed plans to renew an expiring radiation compensation program after Missouri lawmakers objected to the bill excluding residents in their state, our David Sivak reports.
We reported yesterday that Johnson was expected to bring forth a “clean,” two-year reauthorization of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, bypassing legislation from Sen. Josh Hawley that would both extend and expand RECA. The speaker opposed Hawley’s bill due to its hefty $50 billion price tag. However, Johnson’s office later that day decided to cancel the vote following further conversations with GOP Missouri Rep. Ann Wagner, who is the lead sponsor of Hawley’s RECA expansion bill in the House.
“After consulting with Congresswoman Wagner, the Majority Leader and Speaker have decided not to bring the proposed RECA reauthorization to the floor next week,” a spokesperson for the speaker told the Washington Examiner.
Johnson’s office did not lay out a path forward for the program, which expires in early June. But behind the scenes, Wagner presented Johnson with a proposal to offset the cost of the legislation, according to a source familiar with the matter. Read more from David here.
EXXON EASILY PREVAILS IN SHOWDOWN WITH ACTIVIST INVESTORS: Yesterday’s highly anticipated Exxon Mobil shareholder meeting resulted in an easy victory for the oil major’s leadership and a significant setback for climate activist investors.
Exxon reappointed its board of directors in an overwhelming vote, defeating opposition from activist investors and state Democratic financial officials. The directors won election with an average of 95% of the vote, Exxon said in a statement.
The vote had turned into a fight over ESG investing. CalPERS and a few Democratic state officials had called for shareholders to punish Exxon’s leadership for pursuing litigation against climate activist investors even after the investors dropped their resolution.
The activist investors took a step to defuse the issue before the vote yesterday by pledging not to bring forward any more climate resolutions. The threat of future resolutions was Exxon’s motivation for continuing the lawsuit.
Nevertheless, Exxon won easily. CEO Darren Woods said that the votes to reelect him and other board members signal that the company is on the right track. He added that “the activist crowd will try and claim victory on today’s vote, but common sense should tell you otherwise in light of the large margin of the loss.”
Where this leaves us: Shell also recently won a convincing victory against climate activist investors. For right now, it seems momentum has shifted against ESG in the ongoing battle.
A $25K ELECTRIC JEEP? An electric Jeep priced at $25,000 could come to the U.S. “very soon,” Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said yesterday at a conference in New York, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Tavares said that an electric Jeep at that low price point is achievable because the company is already making EVs at lower prices in other markets across the world, noting the Citroën e-C3 hatchback sold in Europe for around the same price.
“The same way we brought the €20,000 Citroën e-C3, you will have a $25,000 Jeep very soon, because we are using the same expertise,” he said:
Why it matters: $25,000 is a significantly lower price point than any current Jeep electric offering. It would also be below current prices for other leading EVs. Tesla and Ford, among others, have also outlined ambitions to put cheaper options on the market as demand flags for more-expensive EVs.
REUTERS ANALYSIS – ETHANOL WON’T QUALIFY AS SUSTAINABLE AVIATION FUEL: Little or no ethanol will qualify for IRA subsidies for sustainable aviation fuel under the rules put out by the Biden administration in April, Reuters found in a new analysis.
For ethanol to qualify for the $1.25 a gallon production tax credit under the rules, it would need to be produced using three specific climate-friendly methods: no-till farming, planting cover crops, and applying enhanced efficiency nitrogen fertilizer.
But almost no corn farmers use all three practices, Reuters found. Five biofuel and farm trade groups said that few or no ethanol producers would meet the standard.
Why it matters: President Joe Biden had promised that the vast majority of SAF would come from farmers. And corn-state legislators, most notably Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, have blasted the administration’s guidance for the credits.
RUNDOWN
Wall Street Journal How America Inadvertently Created an ‘Axis of Evasion’ Led by China
Bloomberg Short on curbside chargers, New York EV drivers are improvising