The folks hard at work in the registrar's offices across Columbia are among the unsung heroes of this difficult time. Many are working long and unexpected hours to try to help students take exams in settings better suited to their varying needs. Small but vital.

A categorical exclusion, or CX, is a category of projects that, if a project meets the qualifications, are predetermined to have a minimal effect on the environment, and can forgo a lengthier environmental assessment/environmental impact statement typically required by NEPA.

A lot of great rules coming out right now from the Biden admin, but one that has gone under the radar is on NEPA reforms from the DOE! Specifically, expanding the list of projects that qualify for categorical exclusions, which can speed up NEPA reviews from 2 years to 2 months!🧵

🛢️ OIL CONTEXT WEEKLY 🛢️

📈 Crude prices rally back to just below $90/bbl as spot markets tighten and sentiment gets a broad uplift from rising equity markets.

Fundies seem strong enough to resist even pretty heavy spec selling...

Full Report: commoditycontext.com/p/ocw-17w24

Summary:

COLUMN: My interview with TotalEnergies CEO

'Of course, I continue to make oil and gas,' he says, emphasizing that demand for fossil fuels is still climbing. 'There’s this wrong idea that supply would dictate demand. No sorry, it doesn’t work like that'

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

I’m gonna scream ‘till I’m red in the face if global central bankers confront climate change-driven supply-side shocks with **rate hikes**

Sorry, can’t innovate our way out of this with stronger price signals to affected industries—gotta degrowth via punitive cost of capital.

Our department just issued rules to protect people from hidden airline fees and to require airlines to give passengers automatic cash refunds when owed. No more having to fend for yourself and jump through hoops to get your money back—airlines will have to automatically do this.

All too often, airlines make passengers navigate a bureaucratic maze of corporate red tape just to get their money back when flights are cancelled or significantly delayed.

Thanks to U.S. Department of Transportation's new rule, airlines will be obliged to automatically pay up.

All credit and blame should go to Preston Mui if this happens

Joe Biden go on Double Pivot.

WALMART U.S. CEO: '.. we are now seeing prices that are in line with where they were 12 months ago. I haven’t been able to say that for a few years .. The last few weeks, we've taken even more prices down in areas like produce and meat and fresh food.”

$WMT ABC News…

The core PCE price index rose 0.32% in March and was up 2.8% from a year earlier

January's gain of 0.45% was revised to a gain of 0.50%.

The 6-month annualized rate of core PCE inflation held steady at 3% in March

The 3-month rate was 4.4%, up from 3.7% in February

The Fed’s increasingly dubious philosophy on housing is they need to suppress housing supply now so they can increase it later.

[Bloomberg Opinion] We’re getting to the point where the impact of higher interest rates on housing is going to be longer-term inflationary because of the negative impact it’s having on construction/new supply: bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

In 2022 and 2023 we had lots of cyclical/rate-sensitive industries slumping, weak business and consumer confidence, recession fears, and a Fed looking to tighten financial conditions. At the moment we don’t have any of that, which is what the bond market is digesting.

to really clear out the regulatory and financial barriers to long range transmission, you need something from FERC (watch this space in May) and Congress (lol), but upgrading existing lines is a very hot topic right now heatmap.news/climate/clean-…

not just power plants, there's transmission news too! money for a line from idaho to nevada (and thus california), and clearing out regulatory barriers for upgrading existing lines heatmap.news/sparks/biden-p…

This is a mirror image of Q223, when consensus was 4% and core PCE was 3.8%. Back then, the downside miss was due to sharply lower airfares on the back of big revisions to the seasonal factors. Good news, if any, is that upward revisions to seasonals will be paid back later.