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Videos circulated on Wednesday of violent clashes between security forces and striking employees of construction firm ICA Fluor at the Dos Bocas oil refinery construction site in Mexico’s Tabasco state.  Workers reportedly are demanding better pay and working conditions before resuming work on the refinery, one of the flagship public works promoted by President Andrés…

Dow Inc. announced a plan Wednesday to develop a net-zero carbon emissions ethane cracker for an industrial customer in Alberta as a capacity expansion by its Fort Saskatchewan complex northeast of the provincial capital in Edmonton. The cracker, fueled by natural gas, would be capable of producing 1.8 million tons/year of ethylene. Environmental renovations of…

Rising consumer demand for fuels from an expanded refinery and retail chain as the Covid-19 pandemic faded helped propel sharply improved financial performance by Cenovus Energy Inc. in the first six months of this year. The Calgary firm’s downstream chain of 1,073 service stations and five U.S. refineries – two in Ohio and one each…

ExxonMobil on Wednesday sanctioned a $240 million-plus investment to improve its Baton Rouge, LA, refinery operations, which include installing technology to reduce emissions. Project construction is expected to begin later this year at the refinery, which has crude capacity of about 517,000 b/d.  The new suite of projects are geared toward improving processing capability, flexibility…

After reaching record levels in 2019, U.S. petroleum refining capacity tapered off substantially this year as several refineries closed amid demand declines hastened by the coronavirus pandemic, federal data posted Thursday showed. As of Sept. 1, the latest available data, the United States had 18.4 million bbl per calendar day (b/cd) of operable petroleum refining…

Progress at Mexico’s biggest energy infrastructure project, the Dos Bocas refinery in Tabasco state, was slowed this week by heavy rains that flooded the construction site, adding to mounting criticism that the project as currently designed is a drain on state funds and part of a poorly designed energy policy. Analysts at Eurasia Group on…

Houston-based Andros Capital Partners said Tuesday it has completed an inaugural $250 million fund to target investments across the energy sector. The private equity firm, founded earlier this year by managing partner Phillip A. Gayle Jr., is considering “private equity investments, credit opportunities and direct asset-level investments” for the Andros Energy Capital LP fund. Middle-market…

The White House’s Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on Wednesday announced a final rule updating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) regulations, a controversial move designed to limit reviews of proposed infrastructure projects, including natural gas and oil pipelines. The final rule would modernize environmental reviews, streamline infrastructure approvals and “reverse years of burdensome overregulation…

FERC has denied a request from three environmental groups to rehear a 2017 order authorizing the Mountaineer XPress and Gulf XPress projects, a pair of TransCanada Corp. efforts to increase natural gas pipeline capacity out of the Appalachian Basin by expanding the company’s Columbia Gas Transmission LLC’s system.