Austria-based Steyr Motors and Italy-based Magneti Marelli (MM) on October 3 announced a cooperation agreement to develop new marine diesel-electric hybrid-propulsion systems.

The ACEA – the European vehicle-makers’ association – on September 29 announced that new registrations of commercial vehicles (often diesel-powered) in the European Union (EU) were up 3.0% in July and 15.7% in August, leading to an 8.3% increase over the two summer months compared with the same period last year.

The recent EU decision to force the transport sector to slash greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions 20% between 2008 and 2030 would favor adoption of much larger freight trucks, according to an October 3 Volvo announcement, citing a new university study.

Maersk Line announced last month a new “Daily Maersk” guaranteed freight shipping service between Europe and Asia, with the result that “containerized cargo will now be delivered with unprecedented frequency and reliability.”

The European Commission on October 4 announced that it will propose legislation declaring that oil-sands crude from Canada must be categorized as relatively high in greenhouse-gas (GHG) life-cycle emissions – potentially complicating future exports of oil sands-derived ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) from U.S. refiners to Europe.

Texas-based Fluor announced October 6 that it won a front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract from North West Redwater Partnership for a new, 150,000 barrel-per-day (b/d) refinery project in Alberta, Canada.

Petrobras announced October 3 that the proposed joint-venture (JV) refinery in Brazil with Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PdVSA) took a step forward thanks to a “favorable opinion” from BNDES (the Brazil development bank) regarding PdVSA bank guarantees.

French technology provider Axens announced October 5 that it won a contract from Iraq’s State Co. for Oil Projects (SCOP) for the construction of the 300,000 barrel-per-day (b/d) refinery in Nassiriya, Iraq, primarily serving the domestic fuels market.

The U.S. National Research Council (NRC) on October 4 released a long-awaited report showing that the U.S. isn’t likely to achieve the cellulosic biofuels targets spelled-out in the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 and the renewable fuel standard-2 (RFS-2) regulatory mandates for 2022.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jointly announced October 3 that they have filed wire-fraud and money-laundering charges against Rodney Hailey of Baltimore-based Clean Green Fuel LLC for allegedly selling US$9 million in renewable information number (RIN) biofuel credits “when in fact the company did not produce any renewable fuel.”

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced September 30 that it completed the acquisition of commercial storage services for the one million-barrel Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve (NEHHOR).

Diesel fuel consumption for power generation doubled in Israel during the first eight months of 2011, compared with the same period in 2010, according to National Infrastructures Ministry statistics.