Halliburton Co. has reached an agreement with BP Exploration & Production Inc. to resolve remaining issues regarding the April 2010 Macondo well blowout in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. No financial details were announced. Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar called BP a “valued customer,” and the “amicable resolution…allows us to close another chapter in the Deepwater Horizon case…” The agreement “allows Halliburton to strengthen its relationship with BP by negotiating a global master services agreement between the companies.” Halliburton previously agreed to settle punitive damages claims brought by a class of plaintiffs arising from incident, and all claims that BP assigned to the settlement class in BP’s April 2012 settlement with the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee (see Daily GPI, Sept. 2, 2014).

Units of European energy giants Royal Dutch Shell and Spain’s Iberdrola are included in the 13-year-old crusade by California officials to obtain more than $3 billion that state electricity consumers paid in 2001-2002 for excess charges following manipulation of western wholesale energy markets. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and a coalition of utility companies and state agencies filed testimony at the FERC as part of an ongoing case against Shell Energy, formerly Coral Power LLC, and Iberdrola, formerly a PacifiCorp unit. The parties are seeking reimbursement of power charges with interest. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has set the matter for an evidentiary hearing.

Four U.S. states — California, Oregon, Vermont and Washington — as well as two Canadian provinces and two Mexican states are among the signatories of an international cooperative memorandum of understanding (MOU) pledging to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 80-95% of 1990 levels by 2050. California Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered a 40% reduction in his state’s GHG emissions by 2030 (see Daily GPI, April 30). The agreement, Under 2 MOU, aims to contain a rise in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius, “the warming threshold at which scientists say there will probably be catastrophic climate disruptions,” Brown said. The MOU is considered a template for the United Nations Climate Change Conference scheduled this year in Paris. Signatories include Canadian provinces Ontario and British Columbia; Mexican states Baja California and Jalisco; Acre, Brazil; Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany; Catalonia, Spain; and Wales, UK.