No deal
** U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Iran is not serious about talks to end their war, as the widening conflict disrupted two of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. Four tankers carrying Saudi crude to Asia reversed course in the Red Sea on Wednesday, a day after three others had done so, following threats to block Saudi shipping from Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, who control the coast on the southern route out.
Targeted mountain
** U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly issued threats to bomb an under-construction Iranian nuclear site buried deep under a mountain as the two nations exchange blows over the Strait of Hormuz. “We’ll be hitting that area … probably pretty soon. And there’s not a thing they can do about it,” Trump said.
Tuesday’s targets
** CENTCOM assets targeted Iranian military operations centers, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities, and military logistics infrastructure to further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz,” the U.S. Central Command said in a statement. The strikes lasted about 75 minutes late on Tuesday, according to the U.S. military. Washington said Iran has attacked more than 30 commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz in the last three months.
Houthis
** The Houthis’ blockade of the Bab al-Mandeb strait couldn’t have come at a worse time for the oil market. Iran’s proxies in Yemen have threatened to cut off a major bypass of the Strait of Hormuz, through which oil tanker traffic has slowed dramatically in recent days. So far, the Houthis have been unable or unwilling to enforce the blockade that the militant group announced Tuesday. But the threat alone has persuaded some ships to abandon their plans to exit the Red Sea heading south.
US Energy
** California files another lawsuit seeking to overturn the Trump administration’s approval of Sable Offshore’s oil drilling operation along the Santa Barbara coast, saying the state’s coastline is “not for sale to enrich the president’s fossil fuel friends.”
** The U.S. Interior Department asks a federal court to toss out challenges to the agency’s former coal-leasing moratorium in the Powder River Basin, saying Congress rendered the cases moot by ending the ban.
** Cypress Creek breaks ground on what’s likely to become the country’s biggest solar and storage farm. The Arkansas facility will bring together 1.6 GW of solar capacity and 1.9 GWh of battery storage, with Google contracted to buy all the electricity from the project’s first two phases.
** Dominion Energy submitted its arguments to Virginia’s State Corporation Commission as it seeks to merge with Florida’s NextEra Energy, giving the utility regulators two months to review the $67 billion deal, with as much as 120 days of extension.
** Plug Power has canceled its $850 million green hydrogen project in Texas, and will sell its 66 acres of land and 164 MW of grid interconnection assets to Stream US Data Centers.
