Energy News Beat — September 18, 2026 One of the Midwest’s most important diesel and gasoline plants is still dark. ExxonMobil’s Joliet refinery in unincorporated Channahon Township, Illinois — about 40 miles southwest of Chicago — remains offline after a Sunday power outage and a subsequent flood that overwhelmed a pump. ZeroHedge flagged the outage […]
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West Texas Intermediate is trading near $101 a barrel. National gasoline is $4.44 a gallon. Those are the conditions that usually refill rig lines and permit queues. In Colorado, they have not. As of September 17, 2026, Colorado operators had filed only 335 drilling permits over the trailing 24 months. In the last 90 days, […]
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The U.S. Coast Guard and FBI boarded a Liberian-flagged very large crude carrier bound for Galveston, Texas, and a second energy tanker headed for another Texas port in the Gulf of Mexico after investigators found indications that foreign cyber actors had compromised their networks. Iranian state media claimed hackers seized control of propulsion, navigation, cargo, […]
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September 17, 2026 Unseasonable heat is pushing power systems that serve more than 100 million people across the United States and Canada into a tight operating window — just as plants and transmission equipment that were scheduled for fall maintenance are still needed online. Temperatures are running more than 20°F above normal in parts of […]
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The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 now sits on President Donald Trump’s desk after the House passed it 262-159 on September 16. The Senate had already approved it 86-11. The bill targets Russia’s energy sector, officials, banks, oligarchs, and shadow fleet while authorizing the president to impose tariffs of up […]
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The 7-1-1 Board of Supervisors vote directs staff to draft a resolution for a later October vote, with a proposed retroactive effective date of September 15. Officials emphasized it is not a legal moratorium under Virginia’s Dillon Rule, but a temporary pause on board-level reviews while Phase 2 data-center standards are completed. Board Chair Phyllis […]
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Diesel prices in the United States have smashed through records, topping $6.31 a gallon nationally as of September 16, 2026. Truckers, farmers, and households feel it immediately. Heating oil, chemically similar to diesel, is following the same path. With midterms weeks away, the political pressure is intense. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he is […]
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Commercial crude oil inventories excluding the SPR fell 640,000 barrels to 423.4 million barrels. That was a third consecutive weekly draw, but smaller than Wall Street expected. Analysts in a Wall Street Journal survey had looked for a 1.4 million-barrel decline. Commercial crude is now about 1% above the five-year average for this time of […]
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Bernadette Wilson, Alaska Republican for Governor, stops by the Energy News Beat Podcast. Alaska is not a remote afterthought. It is one of the United States’ most strategically important resource bases for energy security, defense-critical minerals, and food supply. For two decades, its oil output declined as legacy North Slope fields matured and new projects […]
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under Administrator Lee Zeldin is expected to formally rescind the Biden-era carbon pollution standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants, completing a multi-year rollback of greenhouse-gas rules that the administration argues threatened grid reliability and raised costs. Reports indicate the announcement is timed for a G20 energy ministers meeting in Houston […]
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