Transportation & Infrastructure

The hacker activist group Anonymous said it plans to target the oil-and-gas sector in a June 20 operation.

“It has been a long time coming,” the collective said of the event, Operation Petrol, in a video it released this week on its YouTube page.

The group said it would hone in on the United States, Canada, England, Israel, China, Italy, France, Germany, Russia and the governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.

Pete Ruane, a retired U.S. Marine, says his biggest battle these days is convincing Congress that the roads he takes to work need improving. 

Electric utilities plan to ask President Obama to waive highway tolls for utility crews responding to extreme weather-related power outages, an industry source told The Hill.

Obama is meeting with utility chief executives and trade associations Wednesday at the White House to discuss improving response times to major weather disasters like Hurricane Sandy.

The industry source said it would ask Obama for some quick fixes — mostly on the logistics side of emergency response — to prevent a similar episode, with the toll issue being a good start.

Outgoing Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Monday that new fuel economy standards he helped usher in with President Obama are “a big deal” that will outlast both of them.

“That will be part of President Obama’s legacy. What a legacy — cleaning up the air in America, getting cleaner burning cars,” LaHood said at a news conference in which Obama tapped Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx to lead the Transportation Department (DOT).

The updated Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards require cars to get 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. They were finalized last August.

Air travelers reported long delays at airports Monday as the first worker furloughs related to the automatic spending cuts began. 

The federal government extended a research program to develop biofuels for use in commercial airplanes by five years on Monday.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the agreement at a conference outside Washington, D.C.

"By continuing to work together to produce American made 'drop-in' aviation fuels from renewable feedstocks, we will create jobs and economic opportunity in rural America, lessen America's reliance on foreign oil and develop a thriving biofuels industry that will benefit commercial and military enterprises," Vilsack said in a statement.

President Obama proposed a program in Tuesday's State of the Union address that would divert some revenues from federal oil-and-gas drilling into research for alternative fuel technology.

In a nod to the economic challenges facing many families, Obama cast the initiative, which he called an “Energy Security Trust,” as a way to reduce household gasoline expenses.

“Let’s … free our families and businesses from the painful spikes in gas prices we’ve put up with for far too long,” Obama said.

The proposal was one of many energy items mentioned in Obama’s speech, underscoring the prominent space it occupies in his second-term agenda.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu didn’t have anything to say about his future Thursday at the Washington Auto Show, but was quite chatty when it came to electric vehicles.

Chu has been dodging questions for weeks about whether he will stick around for President Obama's second term. Many expect him to leave the Cabinet, but he hasn't dropped any hints about his plans.

That trend continued at his auto show appearance, which Chu used to pontificate on the future of electric vehicles.

The American Petroleum Institute (API) is "strongly considering" asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case regarding sales of a high-ethanol fuel blend, API Group Downstream Director Bob Greco said Tuesday.

The Supreme Court move would represent another escalation in API’s campaign to roll back rules and court decisions vital to the biofuels industry. Greco said API would need to file a petition for a rehearing by mid-April.

In question is a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling that upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to allow E15 fuel into the marketplace. 

Unionized dockworkers and their employers reached a deal Friday to avert a strike that could have cost the economy billions.