London looks to African infrastructure and energy markets

as informed in Recent announcements by the London offices of Covington & Burling, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, and McCarthy Denning, show that partners with project finance, infrastructure and energy backgrounds are in demand in London's busy lateral law firm hires market. Robin Mizrahi, a partner, and Laure Berthelot, a special counsel, joined from leading United States energy law firm Baker Botts. NEW FACES AT MCCARTHY DENNINGAlso hiring senior staff with African experience, alongside mainstream energy experience gained across a range of emerging markets, is London firm, McCarthy Denning, which has hired two former in-house lawyers, Robin Storey and Stacey Kivel. He has handled a full range of energy sector areas, including upstream, corporate, restructuring, financing, compliance and disputes, with North African experience, alongside mainstream energy markets such as the Middle East and Russia. Sebastian Rice, partner in charge of Akin Gump's London office, said: "Broadening the firm's project finance, power and energy capabilities in London fits perfectly with our strategic objectives in this area."

Lawmakers fear Russian influence on energy markets

Lawmakers are expressing concerns following a new House committee report detailing how Russians attempted to use social media platforms to manipulate U.S. energy markets. Blumenthal is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has examined Russian meddling efforts on social media. Rep. Lamar Smith Lamar Seeligson SmithTexas candidate backed by Trump campaign manager loses primary Five things to watch for in Texas primaries Lawmakers fear Russian influence on energy markets MORE (R-Texas), Science's chairman, said the results shed light on how Russian actors are using social media to influence Americans in significant economic and policy areas. Russia's energy success is intrinsically linked to the U.S., a likely cause for the social media behavior. The report is the latest effort from members of Congress to probe Russian meddling in the U.S. via social media.

PJM's compensation reforms could impact renewable energy markets

as mentioned in Energy and climate geeks joined fans of good governance and rule of law in raising a glass to toast its death, and it was over. In response to that, PJM Interconnection has filed comments which ask for "market reforms and related compensation mechanisms to address resilience concerns and advance operational characteristics that support reliability and resilience". However, UtilityDive notes that that coal- and nuclear-heavy PJM is the only grid operator to specifically ask for compensation reforms in its initial comments. As reflected in comments by former commissioners in the Grid Reliability and Resiliency Pricing rule, changes to wholesale power market pricing that provide additional compensation to certain classes of generators will impact wholesale markets. And this, in turn, will affect the economics of renewable energy generation.

House panel: Russia aimed to disrupt US energy markets using social media

Russia used several American social media accounts in an attempt to disrupt U.S. energy markets, according to a House committee report released Thursday. The committee surmised that the disinformation campaign on social media is connected to Russian fears that a strong U.S. energy economy could negatively impact Russia's oil and natural gas economy. Eastern and central European countries currently get about 75 percent of their natural gas from Russia, with southeastern European countries receiving nearly all of their natural gas from Moscow. For example, Poland recently signed a five-year deal with the U.S. to import liquefied natural gas to decrease dependency on Russian energy supplies, according to the report. U.S. energy exports to European countries are increasing, which means they will have less reason to rely upon Russia for their energy needs.

collected by :Victor Alphen