“West Texas Intermediate crude closed above $80 a barrel for the first time since late 2014 as a growing power crisis from Europe to Asia boosts demand for oil ahead of winter,” Bloomberg reports.

“India stands on the brink of widespread power shortages as most of the country’s coal-fired plants have enough fuel for only a few more days,” Nikkei Asia reports.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports China “ordered its banks to ramp up funding to coal and energy companies, another step in its efforts to ease a power crunch and ensure supplies this winter.”

Financial Times: “China has started unloading a small number of Australian coal shipments despite an unofficial import ban, analysts said, in a move underscoring the intensity of the power crunch facing the world’s second-largest economy.”

“Natural-gas prices have surged, prompting worries about winter shortages and forecasts for the most expensive fuel since frackers flooded the market more than a decade ago,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“China made an unprecedented intervention in the global oil market, releasing crude from its strategic reserve for the first time with the explicit aim of lowering prices,” Bloomberg reports.

“The announcement comes amid surging energy costs in China, not just for oil but also for coal and natural gas, and electricity shortages in some provinces that have forced some factories to cut production. Inflation is rapidly rising too, a political headache for Beijing.”

“The Biden administration on Wednesday released a plan to produce almost half of the nation’s electricity from the sun by 2050 as part of its effort to combat climate change,” the New York Times reports.

“Solar energy provided less than 4 percent of the country’s electricity last year, and the administration’s target of 45 percent would represent a huge leap and will most likely take a fundamental reshaping of the energy industry. In a new report, the Energy Department said the country needed to double the amount of solar energy installed every year over the next four years compared with last year. And then it will need to double annual installations again by 2030.”

“Russia’s Vladimir Putin is orchestrating a deliberate energy supply crisis in Europe by restricting the seasonal flows of pipeline gas, preventing the region rebuilding its severely depleted inventories fast enough before the onset of winter,” the Daily Telegraph reports.

“A federal judge on Wednesday threw out the permits for a controversial oil project planned for Alaska’s North Slope, faulting the way the federal government had assessed its environmental impact, including how it might harm polar bears,” the Washington Post reports.

New York Times: “The multibillion-dollar plan, known as Willow, by the oil giant ConocoPhillips had been approved by the Trump administration and legally backed by the Biden administration. Environmental groups sued, arguing that the federal government had failed to take into account the effects that drilling would have on wildlife and that the burning of the oil would have on global warming.”

“The Biden White House increasingly views rising gasoline prices as a source of potential political peril — and is now asking some of the world’s biggest oil producers to pump more oil,” Axios reports.

“This trend, combined with a fragile economic recovery threatened by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, and inflation beginning to bite consumers, could threaten the administration’s ambitious congressional agenda for late summer and early fall.”

Financial Times: White House calls on OPEC to boost oil production.

“China will launch a national emissions-trading program on Friday, creating the world’s largest carbon market and doubling the share of global emissions covered under such programs,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Approvals for oil and gas drilling on American public lands are set this year to reach their highest level since George W Bush was president, casting doubt on President Biden’s green agenda,” the Times of London reports.

CNN: “The US government has spent the past week assessing a report of a leak at a Chinese nuclear power plant, after a French company that part owns and helps operate it warned of an ‘imminent radiological threat.’”

Slate: “The Canadian company behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline called it quits on the project Wednesday, ending a decade-long standoff over the $8 billion pipeline that promised to transport 830,000 barrels of crude oil across the American plains each day.”