Mexico to buy Shell's share of Texas refinery
Mexico will says it will buy Shell's 50% share in the jointly owned Deer Park refinery near Houston.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday that Mexico will pay about $600 million for the plant, which already processes a lot of Mexican crude. It is part of López Obrador's central policy to build, acquire or renovate oil refineries, when most countries are trying to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
The Mexican president had complained recently that Deer Park had not yielded any benefits for Mexico under the current scheme. But he acknowledged it does process 340,000 barrels of crude per day.
Poland defies EU and keeps coal mine
Poland's government on Monday defied an injunction by the top European Union court that ordered the immediate closure of a major brown coal mine, with officials saying it would shake the nation's energy system and lead to the layoff of thousands of employees.
Development Minister Jaroslaw Gowin said Poland wouldn't shut the lignite mine in Turow, on the border with Germany and the Czech Republic, but instead was engaged in "very intensive diplomatic and law-related efforts," to secure undisturbed operation of the mine and connected power plant that generates some 7% of Poland's energy.
The EU's Court of Justice on Friday ordered Poland to immediately stop operation of the mine, heeding Prague's complaints that it drained groundwater from Czech territory and that Poland recently extended its license without proper prior environmental assessment.
Gowin said he considers the court's decision "scandalously incommensurate" to the situation and one that would lead to the "loss of tens of thousands of jobs and very serious disturbances in Poland's energy system," cutting power to millions of households.
Russian deported after failed Tesla ransomware plot
RENO, Nev. - A Russian man was sentenced to what amounted to time already served and will be deported for trying to pay a Tesla employee $500,000 to install computer malware in a bid to steal company secrets for ransom.
Egor Kriuchkov apologized to a federal judge on Monday in Reno, Nevada. The judge acknowledged the attempted hack wasn't successful and the company network wasn't compromised.
The 27-year-old Kriuchkov has been in custody since his arrest last August in Los Angeles, and will remain in custody until he leaves the country. Tesla CEO Elon Musk previously acknowledged that his company was the target of the scheme.
LA airport celebrates $1.7 billion concourse
A massive new $1.73 billion concourse with 15 gates has opened at Los Angeles International Airport.
The West Gates expansion went into service Monday after a ceremony marking more than four years of work as part of a $14.5 billion airport modernization project. The concourse will serve international and domestic flights.
Located just west of the Tom Bradley International Terminal, the five-level, 750,000-square-foot West Gates concourse is 1,700 feet long. Officials say it is based around a digitally based travel experience. It includes biometric boarding gates, thousands of places to plug in, wireless internet and touchscreen kiosks.
- Compiled by Dave Flessner