Energy: Latest Financial Topics from The New York Times

Here is the latest Energy News from The New York Times.

Energy Transfer Sees a Way Out of Its Williams Pipeline Deal
Energy Transfer’s outside legal adviser was unable to provide a certain tax opinion, a condition required to close the deal.

NRG Steps Back From Alternative Energy Ventures in Cost-Cutting Effort
The company will pare its presence in its electric vehicle charging business, and its home solar division will sell future customer agreements it originates to two partners.

Dot Earth Blog: Annals of the ‘Methane Age’: Gas from Fracked Wells No Longer ‘Unconventional’
A new report shows how profoundly hydraulic fracturing has changed natural gas production in the United States.

Exxon Mobil Backs FuelCell Effort to Advance Carbon Capture Technology
The energy giant is investing in FuelCell Energy’s technology for carbon capture and sequestration, a potential way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Shell’s First-Quarter Profit Fell 89%, Reflecting Low Oil and Gas Prices
The largest oil company in Europe reported profit of $484 million, compared with $4.4 billion in the first quarter of 2015.

Dot Earth Blog: Scientists Build a Hype Detector for Online Climate News and Commentary
Through Climate Feedback, climate scientists are trying to build a layer of veracity over online news and commentary — but readers have to want the truth.

Colorado Court Strikes Down Local Bans on Fracking
The ruling gave oil and gas companies a victory in a lengthy battle over energy production in the environmentally conscious state.

Researchers Aim to Put Carbon Dioxide Back to Work
Scientists are working on ways to recycle and reuse carbon dioxide, rather than storing it underground, to fight climate change.

The Science of Fat: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight
Contestants lost hundreds of pounds during Season 8, but a study of them helps explain why they could not keep all of that weight off.

Halliburton and Baker Hughes Call Off $35 Billion Merger
The companies cited difficulties in obtaining approval from regulators as well as sharply lower energy prices.

Selling Bottled Water That’s Better for the Planet
Companies like Just Water are addressing customers’ demand for convenience while working to make their bottles more environmentally friendly.

A Crusader in the Coal Mine, Taking On President Obama
The energy tycoon Robert Murray has fought the president all the way to the Supreme Court with a message: To keep America strong, keep mining coal.

Exxon and Chevron Earnings Hurt by Low Oil Prices
Exxon Mobil on Friday posted its smallest profit for any quarter since 1999, while Chevron reported a large first-quarter loss of $725 million.

Wait, What’s That Noise? Cicadas, the New Batch, to Sound Siren Song in 5 States
Everything you need to know about the insects set to ascend from the ground after 17 years and seek mates with singing that sounds like a tiny maraca.

Exxon Mobil’s Sterling Credit Is Downgraded by Standard & Poor’s
The oil producer lost its AAA rating, leaving only two American companies with the highest rating: Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson.

BP Reports $583 Million Loss in First Quarter
Lower oil prices were behind the red ink, and the company said it would keep its dividend for the quarter at 10 cents a share, payable in June.

Walter Kohn, Nobel-Winning Scientist, Dies at 93
A chemist and physicist who fled Nazi-occupied Vienna as a child and built a distinguished academic career in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1957.

China Curbs Plans for More Coal-Fired Power Plants
The country, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, halted plans for new coal-fired plants and postponed building of some already approved.

Carbon Pricing Becomes a Cause for the World Bank and I.M.F.
To ensure that the Paris agreement on climate change works, two global lenders have begun pressing national governments to ensure that polluters pay for the carbon dioxide they emit.

Dot Earth Blog: In Hudson Valley Schools, a Program Spreads Learning Through Gardening
An enterprising young woman skips college to create a program nurturing a love of gardening and fresh food in Hudson Valley children.

Dot Earth Blog: A Mindful Path to Environmental Progress in a Noisy Media Environment
A psychiatrist and a journalist talk about communication, the mind and environmental progress.

Trilobites: Celebrate Earth Day With a 4,800-Year-Old Tree (If You Can Find It)
The exact location of Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine commonly known as the world’s oldest tree, is kept a secret.

Renewable Energy Stumbles Toward the Future
The problems at companies like SunEdison resemble those of past leading-edge industries.

Mushroom Suits, Biodegradable Urns and Death’s Green Frontier
A growing number of products rely on sleek design and online publicity to get people comfortable with an environmentally friendly death.

SunEdison Files for Bankruptcy Protection
The renewable energy development company, which grew rapidly in recent years, said it aimed to shed assets to streamline its business.

Leaders Roll Up Sleeves on Climate, but Experts Say Plans Don’t Pack a Wallop
Unless countries develop more ambitious plans, they say, the world could suffer profound consequences, including debilitating heat waves, food shortages and fast-rising seas.

Letter of Recommendation: Letter of Recommendation: AstroTurf
It remains an object strangely out of time, like a souvenir from an era when the domestic aesthetic was all ersatz nostalgia.

William M. Gray, Hurricane Predictor and Climate Change Skeptic, Dies at 86
Dr. Gray aggregated measures of atmospheric conditions, water current and water temperature to predict the number and intensity of tropical storms.

Editorial: An Energy Bill in Need of Fixes
Senate and House versions of a bill include commendable measures, but also many harmful provisions that a conference bill needs to improve upon.

Senate Passes Broad Bill to Modernize Energy Infrastructure
The bill, approved 85 to 12, united Republicans and Democrats around a measure to better align the nation’s energy infrastructure with the changing ways that power is produced.

Dutch Court Overturns $50 Billion Ruling in Yukos Case
Four shareholders in the defunct energy company had demanded compensation from Russia, which they said had deliberately crippled the company with tax demands.

2016 Already Shows Record Global Temperatures
A report shows that it has been the hottest year to date, thanks to both climate change and El Niño.

Already Troubled Pipeline Deal Gets Hung Up on Basic Provision
A merger between Energy Transfer Equity and the Williams Companies faltered again after an impasse regarding a so-called 721 opinion.

Economic Scene: Liberal Biases, Too, May Block Progress on Climate Change
Conservative arguments that climate change is a hoax are absurd. But liberal resistance to nuclear power plants might be equally damaging.

Obama to Visit a Saudi Arabia Deep in Turmoil
As the kingdom prepares to greet the president, it faces low oil prices, rising Iranian influence and fears of a widening rift with the United States.

Dot Earth Blog: A Professional Foe of Climate Campaigners Gets His Big-Screen Moment
A mixed review of a film aiming to defuse global warming alarm.

Dot Earth Blog: Goldman Prize For Six Bottom-Up Environmental Leaders
A big award honors and supports activists working at the local level on big environmental problems.

Asia Markets Fall After Oil Production Deal Collapses
Meetings that included officials from most of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia had been set up to calm markets.

Advertising: Seventh Generation Taps Maya Rudolph for Its Biggest Campaign Yet
This month, the company, which has focused on earth-friendly products for decades, began a $15 million campaign to attract new customers and reclaim those who may have strayed.

Major Oil Exporters Fail to Agree on Production Freeze
A freeze would have involved little sacrifice on the part of oil producers, but they remained unable to reach an accord.

Dot Earth Blog: Humanity’s Future – Fragile or Hyperconnected, or Both?
How changing flows of money, information and trade are rendering old notions of borders and geopolitics obsolete.

Calls for Shipping and Aviation to Do More to Cut Emissions
Left out of the Paris climate agreement, which is to be signed at the United Nations this week, the two industries nonetheless face pressure to be greener.

Farmers in Arid India Share Camps With Their Cattle
In a nation where cows are both sacred and essential, camps have been set up to preserve them in a drought. But instead of dropping them off, the owners are staying.

SunEdison, Becoming So Big It Fails, Prepares for Bankruptcy
The filing signaled the potential end to SunEdison’s ambitions to become the world’s leading renewable energy development company.

Revalued: Keurig’s New K-Cup Coffee Is Recyclable, but Hardly Green
Keurig’s effort relies on convenience-oriented consumers to take extra steps to deal with used pods, and it doesn’t address production waste.