The North Dakota Senate voted Thursday to change how wind tax revenue is distributed, sending more future wind revenue to the state general fund rather than counties.Senate Bill 2331 directs one-third of wind tax revenue to the state and two-thirds to counties for wind projects constructed after Dec. [node:read-more:link]

Oil imports by rail from Canada have hit a historic high, meaning more oil trains are rolling across Minnesota and raising the alert level of local emergency managers. Rail shipments from Canada to the United States more than doubled during 2018 as Canadian oil production outstripped the capability of pipelines to ship the stuff, including the six Enbridge-owned lines crossing northern Minnesota. [node:read-more:link]

Pennsylvania is halting construction permits for natural gas pipelines operated by Texas-based Energy Transfer LP, as the governor on Friday said the company has failed to respect the state’s laws and communities.The state Department of Environmental Protection said Energy Transfer is not fixing problems related to an explosion last year, and piled yet another penalty onto a company project in the state.State agencies already have imposed millions of dollars in fines and several temporary shutdown orders on Energy Transfer projects, while a county prosecutor is demanding documents from the [node:read-more:link]

TransCanada Corp. said its Keystone pipeline, which carries Canadian crude to the U.S., was likely the source of an oil spill in Missouri that prompted the company to shut a segment of the line.The disruption comes as U.S. Gulf Coast refiners seek alternatives to heavy crude after sanctions on Venezuela effectively cut off access to the country’s oil. Canada’s oil-sands crude serves as a similar substitute, but Alberta has struggled with pipeline bottlenecks that have forced rationing on export pipelines and prompted the province to impose mandatory production curtailments. [node:read-more:link]

The Chesterfield Township (N.J.) planning board has approved plans for a small USDA-inspected meat processing plant.Located on a 14-acre site, the facility initially will process and warehouse meat for the owner’s Altoona, Penn., wholesale store. Once upgrades such as a new cooler are made, the plant will kill about 60 head of lamb and 10 head of cattle per day, according to the report. [node:read-more:link]

The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, according to the first global scientific review.More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. [node:read-more:link]

In theory, closing off China’s soybean market due to the trade dispute with the U.S. on top of generally low prices for the commodity should affect all industry players, big to small. Agriculture economist Pat Westhoff begged to differ. “The impact on total revenue may be very similar across the scale of production,” according to Westhoff, who’s an ag economics professor at the University of Missouri. “But sometimes the effect on net revenue can be very different. [node:read-more:link]

A lot of people, including presidential candidates visiting Iowa, are throwing around the idea of a “Green New Deal” to confront climate change, as polls indicate more Americans are thinking about how they can help turn back the devastation that Earth’s warming promises. It’s easy to support until the specifics come down. Nobody really knows what such a program entails. But we hear of increasing taxes on the uber wealthy in just about every way you can imagine to pay for a massive national effort to create jobs around “green” initiatives. [node:read-more:link]

The United States will resume an anti-dumping investigation into Mexican tomatoes, the Commerce Department said on Thursday, withdrawing from a 2013 managed trade deal that U.S. growers and lawmakers say has failed. [node:read-more:link]

The federal government is encouraging rural communities to take advantage of new opportunities to expand broadband internet service. The U.S. Department of Agriculture launched a new toolkit to support the deployment of high-speed internet service in rural communities. [node:read-more:link]