National
• Hurricane Helene flooding could push Appalachia utilities to rethink the region’s power grid. The grid was described by one official as a “really far-flung set of distribution lines going up into the hills and serving different communities.”
• Vice President Kamala Harris criticizes former President Donald Trump for attacking the federal response efforts to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, suggesting he’s trying to leverage the disasters to his advantage.
• The crisis continues at Boeing, and the aircraft manufacturer announced Friday that it plans to lay off approximately 17,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce as it faces a dismal third-quarter earnings report and ongoing damage from striking workers.
• ExxonMobil announces its secured leases for 271,000 acres in waters off Texas for an offshore carbon capture project.
• Environmental groups allege in a new lawsuit that the Tennessee Valley Authority didn’t adequately assess the effects of its plans to replace a coalfired power plant with natural gas.
• Former U.S. Naval Academy dairy farm in Maryland is on its way to becoming a solar farm as part of the Department of Defense’s goal of going net-zero by 2050.
• Total U.S. consumption of natural gas rose by 1.2% (0.8 Bcf/d) compared with the previous report week, according to data from S&P Global Commodity Insights. Natural gas consumption in the residential and commercial sector increased by 16.1% (1.5 Bcf/d) week over week.
• Summit Next Gen, a subsidiary of Iowa-based Summit Agricultural Group, has unveiled plans for the world’s largest ethanol-to-jet fuel plant. This massive 60-acre facility, set to be built at the Houston Ship Channel in Texas, aims to produce 250 million gallons of SAF per year. World
• Volkswagen Group on Friday reported a 7% decline in third-quarter global deliveries, showing how Europe’s car industry is facing tough challenges, including weak demand from China and high production costs at home.
• Democratic Republic of Congo’s top mining official said the country is courting new investors for its worldclass deposits of key metals as it looks to diversify ownership in its industry, which is currently dominated by China.
• A gloom looms over Cognac, a small town in France that has given its name to France’s most famous brandy. The sector was on a decade-long tear until soaring inflation thumped foreign sales. Cognac exports fell over a fifth in 2023, and this year’s harvest was already threatened by disease and poor weather before Beijing announced its provisional tit-for-tat measures against the region’s top tipple.
• Thailand’s new government will restart negotiations with Cambodia to explore an offshore oil and gas field with at least $300 billion worth of reserves that the two countries have been squabbling over since the 1970s.
• China’s biggest coal miner announced the construction this week of another massive project to supply feedstock for petrochemicals makers and help clear a prospective surplus of the fossil fuel. China Energy Investment Corp. said it will spend 170 billion yuan ($24 billion) to build an integrated plant in the northwestern region of Xinjiang that will turn coal into oil products.