WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon and happy Wednesday, readers! We are starting off today’s newsletter with President Donald Trump announcing plans to cancel an oil deal with Venezuela made by his predecessor.
Callie and Maydeen also take a look at Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s plans to lay off nearly 65% of employees at the agency.
Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner energy and environment writers Callie Patteson (@CalliePatteson) and Maydeen Merino (@MaydeenMerino). Email cpatteson@washingtonexaminer dot com or mmerino@washingtonexaminer dot com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.
TRUMP PULLS VENEZUELA OIL LICENSE: President Donald Trump said today that he plans to cancel an oil deal with Venezuela made by his predecessor over two years ago.
The details: In a social media post, the president announced that the administration would be “reversing the concessions that Crooked Joe Biden gave to” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in November 2022. Trump appeared to be referring to a concession agreement made at the time that granted a production and selling license to Chevron Corp, allowing it to operate in the country, despite U.S. sanctions.
Trump said he would be revoking the license over “electoral conditions within Venezuela” as well as the country’s failure to return “violent criminals that they sent into” the U.S. at a rapid pace. “I am therefore ordering that the ineffective and unmet Biden ‘Concession Agreement’ be terminated as of the March 1st option to renew,” Trump wrote. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Some background: Chevron is currently the only U.S. oil producer in Venezuela, producing around 200,000 barrels per day. While the company indicated last month that it wanted to extend its current license, Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously urged the administration to “re-explore” the deal, claiming companies like Chevron were pumping billions of dollars into the nation.
MORE LAYOFFS TO HIT EPA: Trump warned during his first cabinet meeting today that additional layoffs are set to hit the Environmental Protection Agency – possibly impacting more than 10,000 jobs.
The details: “I spoke with Lee Zeldin and he thinks he’s going to be cutting 65 or so percent from the people from Environmental, and we’re gonna speed up the process too at the same time,” Trump told reporters. He said that many EPA employees had failed to do their job, or didn’t even exist to begin with.
“A lot of people that weren’t doing their job, they were just obstructionists, and a lot of people that didn’t exist I guess,” Trump said.
The U.S. Equal Employee Opportunity Commission estimates that more than 18,700 permanent and temporary workers are employed by the EPA. If EPA administrator Zeldin moves forward with the mass firings, it could impact well over 11,000 federal jobs at the agency.
Second round: Trump’s remarks come after the agency – and several others – were hit in a first round of layoffs earlier this month. On Feb. 13, the Office of Personnel Management urged department heads to lay off probationary employees, in an administration effort to save money across the government. While some agencies like the Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Agriculture laid off thousands of employees immediately following the directive, the EPA confirmed to Business Insider that it only fired 388 employees.
ZELDIN LOOKS TO UNDO KEY GREENHOUSE GAS FINDINGS: The Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly seeking to slash the agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” allowing it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a threat to human health and welfare.
Zeldin is asking the White House to get rid of the endangerment finding, according to three people familiar with the matter, the Washington Post reports. The endangerment finding was the result of a 2007 Supreme Court case Massachusetts v EPA, in which the court ruled that greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from motor vehicles were within the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act.
The high court then required the EPA to determine the endangerment of GHGs. The EPA in 2009 concluded that GHG threatens human health and emissions from motor vehicles are a contributing factor.
In a day-one executive order, Trump asked the EPA to review the “legality and continuing applicability of” the endangerment finding. The administration has not publicly released any recommendations whether to reverse the agency’s authority to regulate air pollution.
The Sierra Club, an environmental advocacy group, asked the administration last week to publicly release its recommendations.
Meanwhile, the Environmental Defense Fund said today that the endangerment finding is the agency’s “bedrock determination” that pollution harms human health. The advocacy group said that undoing the endangerment finding would be “unlawful” and ignore the agency’s responsibility.
FEMA SCRAPS CLIMATE REFERENCES: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is the latest federal office to remove references to climate change, global warming, and similar terminology as part of the Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal government.
The details: An agency memo obtained by E&E News reveals that FEMA is removing around 34 words and phrases from all official agency documents. The memo, titled “Recovery Guidance for Terminology Changes” was reportedly sent on Feb. 19 by a senior career FEMA official to around 25 employees.
It specifically calls for removing the following climate-related terms:
- Carbon footprint
- Net zero
- Green
- Changing climate
- Climate Resilience
- Global warming
Not the first: At the end of January, the USDA was ordered to remove major references to climate change across the agency’s website. An internal email obtained by Politico at the time revealed the USDA’s office of communications ordered agency employees to delete landing pages regarding USDA climate hubs, climate-related agriculture initiatives, wildlife information, and dozens of other programs.
REPUBLICANS LOOK TO REVERSE EPA’S RUBBER TIRE RULE: Republican Sens. Tim Scott and Roger Wicker, with Rep. Morgan Griffith, today introduced a Congressional Review Act resolution to reverse an Environmental Protection Agency rule aimed at reducing emissions from the manufacturing of rubber tires.
The Congressional Review Act or CRA is a special legislative process that allows lawmakers to bypass the filibuster and take a simple majority vote in the House and Senate to overturn a regulation.
The Republican lawmakers will be seeking to undo the EPA’s Rubber Tire Manufacturing National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants rule.
The EPA’s rubber tire rule was on the list of regulations that House Majority Leader Steve Scalise introduced last week, outlining the regulations Republicans would seek to slash in the next couple of weeks through the CRA.
BP SAYS BYE TO GREEN SPENDING: British oil giant BP is officially going back to its roots in keeping its focus on oil and gas production, abandoning investments in green energy.
The details: Today, CEO Murray Auchincloss confirmed that the company would be increasing its investments in oil and gas by around $10 billion a year, with the hope that the funds will boost output to around 2.5 million barrels per day by 2030, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Previously, the company had intended to slash its output to around 2 million barrels per day under the same timeline. Other changes include ending more than $5 billion annual investments in green businesses. BP won’t be giving up on clean energy completely, as the company said it plans to keep investments in companies focused on bio-fuels, bio-gas, and electric vehicle charging. Additionally, BP plans to partner with other companies to trade electricity generated by wind and solar.
Key quote: “We’re doing an awful lot to help the transition,” Auchincloss said of climate mitigation efforts. “We’re just doing it smarter.”
ICYMI – PALISADES NUCLEAR PLANT ANNOUNCES SMR AGREEMENT: Holtec International announced this week that it signed a strategic agreement with Hyundai Engineering and Construction to build a massive fleet of small modular reactors through the 2030s.
The details: Holtec made the announcement yesterday from the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Covert Township, Michigan. Over the next 10-15 years, the company is looking to build a substantial 10-gigawatt fleet of SMRs co-located with the main plant. Holtec said it intends to construct two 300 megawatt SMRs by 2030, which could be the first small reactors to come online in the country. Combined, these reactors would nearly double the amount of energy generated at the entire nuclear plant located on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
But Holtec faces quite a few hurdles before it can bring any SMRs online. The company has not yet received a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its SMR design. So far, the federal regulator has only given a license to one SMR design. That was awarded to NuScale Power in January 2023, but the project was scrapped later that year. A number of other companies are looking to secure similar certification, including Amazon and Alphabet.
Compared to larger nuclear facilities, SMRs traditionally have a smaller physical footprint, allowing the reactors to be built closer to local grids. The small facilities also historically take less time to build, allowing the reactors to come online and supply energy sooner.
A reminder: Holtec is first looking to make history by reopening the Palisades Nuclear Plant later this year. The power plant shuttered in 2022, having been open since 1971. Over the last few years, Holtec ramped up its efforts to bring the 800 megawatt record back online by October of this year. But the company has faced a number of challenges in the process including safety concerns from nearby residents and key repairs needed for more than 1,000 steam generator tubes.
Holtec was previously expecting to receive final approval to restart the plant by this summer, though it remains unclear if they will, as the NRC described Holtec’s reopening schedule as “very demanding” and “aggressive” in January. If successful, Palisades would be the first decommissioned nuclear plant to restart in U.S. history.
RUNDOWN
Washington Post Why your coffee fix has gotten so pricey — and will only get worse
E&E News Electricity prices are spiking. That’s a problem for Trump.
New York Times She Lobbied for a Carcinogen. Now She’s at the E.P.A., Approving New Chemicals.