Eliecer Palacios

Electric car operators are now able to charge up at BP stations. The oil major unveiled its first two ultra-fast electric vehicle (EV) chargers at UK retail stations last week. The initiative highlights BP’s advantage over smaller companies in integrating its massive, fossil-fuel infrastructure with recently acquired renewable technology. BP acquired Chargemaster, the UK’s leading provider of electric charging points, last year, and the new entity BP Chargemaster now has over 7000 charging points.

Electricity prices in Texas spiked to $9,000 per megawatt hour (Mwh) this week as temperatures hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit, fueling demand for alternative energy and storage technologies. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas warned that the state is likely to experience shortages this week as power use will climb over 73,000 MW on Thursday as residents blast air conditioners.

Austria has moved to acquire Russian oil and gas assets, to the chagrin of some of its European neighbors. This is the case with OMV AG (OMVKY) , a Vienna-based integrated oil and gas company, which just announced the acquisition of a 24.98% stake in Siberian gas assets from Russian gas giant Gazprom (OGZPY) . This transaction is a capitulation of a long asset swap dispute with Norway over OMV's Norwegian assets, which were originally earmarked to be swapped with Gazprom back in 2016.