EPA READY TO SCRAP OBAMA’S FUEL-EFFICIENCY RULES THIS WEEK: The Environmental Protection Agency is expected this week to announce its decision to not move forward with the Obama administration’s strict new fuel-efficiency and greenhouse gas rules for cars and light trucks.

• Revision coming: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has signed the measure, which is a redo of the Obama administration’s review of the rules that said a 54-mile per gallon standard, more than double the current average, was prudent. After protests by many automakers that the decision was rushed, the Trump administration decided to scrap President Barack Obama’s decision and conduct its own review.

Pruitt is expected to say the Obama administration’s fuel-economy rules for cars and light-duty trucks, such as pickups and sport utility vehicles, must be revised for model years 2022 to 2025, although the agency won’t immediately propose new requirements. Obama’s standards would require automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

• Targeting Ford: Protesters began amassing around Ford Motor Co.’s government relations office in Washington Monday morning to urge it not to reject the rollback. Ford and others argue that the low cost of gasoline has driven consumers to buy less-efficient vehicles and hybrids, such as Ford’s popular F-150 pickup trucks.

Higher fuel-efficiency standards would punish automakers such as Ford for meeting customer demand for trucks and SUVs, as EPA judges fuel efficiency based on an average of a company’s total model-year fleet. If a company decides to make more less-efficient cars, it won’t meet the standard and would be subject to fines by the agency.

• Clean car demand? Environmentalists and consumer advocates say there is ample demand for more fuel-efficient and battery-powered cars and that consumers favor cleaner cars.

Look for EPA to issue it decision as soon as Monday.

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CONSERVATIVE COALITION CALLS FOR REPEALING VEHICLE FUEL STANDARDS PROGRAM: A coalition of conservative leaders on Monday morning praised the EPA for its expected action to reject strict fuel-efficiency rules for vehicles imposed during the Obama administration and even called for repeal of the program that sets the rules.

• ‘Riven with problems’: “As you know, the CAFE program is riven with problems,” the conservatives wrote in a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, referring to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards program.

“While we believe repealing the entire program is appropriate and warranted, we are pleased that the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency, under your leadership, are taking meaningful steps to reduce the burden and irrationality of this outdated and unnecessarily complicated mandate.”

• Sign me up: Tom Pyle, president of the free-market American Energy Alliance and Trump’s former Energy Department transition team leader, organized the letter.

Other signees include Michael Needham of Heritage Action, Brent Wm. Gardner of Americans for Prosperity, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform.

• EPA preps action: The EPA is expected to formally declare this week the Obama administration’s fuel-efficiency rules for vehicles are “not appropriate.”

Pruitt plans to visit a Virginia Chevrolet dealership on Tuesday to make the announcement, according to Reuters and the New York Times. He had to sign papers making his decision official by Sunday.

EPA KEEPS VIGIL OVER EARTH DAY DESPITE MULTIPLE REG ROLLBACKS: EPA’s Earth Day clock is up and running on its website, despite the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental regulations.

It appears the Trump EPA plans to mark Earth Day on April 22. See the clock tick down here.

COAL GROUP CEO EMBRACES FERC AS OTHERS PROD PERRY TO GO AROUND THE GRID WATCHDOG: The head of a pro-coal group is rolling up his sleeves to work with federal regulators to find a way to support coal-fired power plants, even as a major utility is pleading with Energy Secretary Rick Perry to forget the regulators and use his authority to overstep them altogether.

• The long haul: Paul Bailey, the president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, told the Washington Examiner that he supports the electricity markets overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, and is willing to work with them, even though the process may take a while.

“We are not anti-market at all,” said Bailey, who added that his group is in it for the long haul to see if it can get FERC to agree on a definition for resilience, which would lead to new ways for coal plants to be compensated by the giant public utilities FERC oversees, such as PJM Interconnection.

Meanwhile, the Ohio-based utility First Energy doesn’t think the FERC process is worth the effort.

The company wants Perry to step in quickly and issue an emergency order that directs regional grid operator PJM Interconnection to take immediate steps to keep the company’s coal and nuclear plants afloat amid hard economic times.

• First Energy bankruptcy: The electricity sales and marketing arm of the company, First Energy Solutions, quietly filed for bankruptcy over the weekend.

The company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Saturday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Akron, Ohio, soon after it announced it would be closing three of its nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Opponents of the First Energy bid at the Energy Department, in a formal complaint to Perry, suggested bankruptcy would be a better alternative than asking the federal government to order grid operators to keep the plants online.

CRITICS PREDICT PRUITT’S OUSTER OVER CONDO CONTROVERSY: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie predicted Sunday that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt could be the next member of President Trump’s Cabinet to go, because Pruitt spent some of his first year in office living in a Washington townhouse co-owned by the wife of an energy lobbyist.

• ‘Has to go’: “I don’t know how you survive this one, and if he has to go, it’s because he never should’ve been there in the first place,” Christie said on ABC News.

Christie headed up Trump’s transition team before he was replaced by Vice President Mike Pence shortly after the 2016 election.

• ‘Real trouble’: Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, of Alabama, meanwhile, said Sunday he suspected Pruitt was “on his way out” of the Trump administration because of his unusual living arrangement.

“I think he’s in real trouble,” Jones told ABC. “People are just frustrated with Cabinet members who seem to want to use taxpayer dollars to fund their own personal lifestyle.”

• $50 question: Pruitt paid $50 per night for a single bedroom in a condo near the Capitol, only paying on the nights he actually slept there. In all, Pruitt paid $6,100 to use the room for roughly six months.

PRUITT’S SECURITY TEAM BROKE DOWN CONDO DOOR THINKING HE WAS UNCONSCIOUS: Pruitt’s security detail broke down the door of the Capitol Hill condo last March, believing he was unconscious, but it turns out he was only sleeping, according to a report Friday.

A Capitol Police officer called 911 at the request of Pruitt’s security detail, which had tried unsuccessfully reaching him by phone, and by banging on the condo’s front door, according to police recordings obtained by ABC News.

• False alarm: The protective detail then broke down the door to the condo. Pruitt was waking up from a nap and declined medical attention. A police report was not filed.

The EPA reimbursed the condo owner $2,460 for the cost of the wood and glass door, at taxpayer expense.

INTERIOR TO HOLD ANOTHER BIG OFFSHORE DRILLING AUCTION IN GULF: The Trump administration on Friday announced it would hold a new auction for offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in August.

The 77-million acre offering is slightly larger than a similar oil and natural gas lease sale conducted by the Interior Department last month, which the agency billed as the as the largest offshore drilling sale in U.S. history.

• Looks familiar: The new sale, to be held Aug. 15, covers 77.3 million acres and 14,474 unleased blocks, in federal waters offshore Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. It covers almost the same area as the previous sale, in which companies bid on just 1 percent of available acreage.

The March 21 sale offered 76.9 million acres and 14,776 unleased blocks in the same distances and depths offshore.

That sale raised $124.8 million on 159 bids from 33 companies, including Shell, Chevron, Total and BP.

• Mixed reviews: Interior hailed the March sale as a satisfying “bellwether” for the Trump administration’s efforts to massively expand offshore drilling in areas where it’s not currently permitted. But critics said the sale received modest industry interest, noting companies bid on only 815,403 acres, which is 46 percent less than Interior expected.

OVERFISHING CAUSING CLASHES BETWEEN MAN AND DOLPHINS: A new study in the journal Human Ecology shows a clash between man and beast developing in the eastern Mediterranean, caused by a scarcity of food from overfishing.

• Fearless dolphin marauders: The study shows that dolphins are targeting commercial fishermen nets for an easy meal, tearing nets and damaging fishing gear.

The researchers found that nets were six times more likely to be damaged when dolphins were around.

“It seems that some dolphins may be actively seeking nets as a way to get food,” said Robin Snape, an ecologist with the University of Exeter, who led the study.

• Who’s to blame? Net damage is irritating for the fishermen, but the study showed they must share in the blame as overfishing is the real culprit.

• It’s getting ‘vicious:’ Snape called it a “vicious cycle” that is “probably driven by falling fish stocks, which also result in low catches – meaning more nets are needed and higher costs for fishers.

“Effective management of fish stocks is urgently needed to address the overexploitation that is causing this vicious cycle,” he said.

SAUDIS WANT NOTHING LESS THAN TO DOMINATE GLOBAL SOLAR MARKET: Saudi Arabia aims to extend its crude oil prowess to exporting solar energy technology, officially kicking off its “Solar Power Project Plan 2030” Friday with energy experts brought in to back that goal at a conference.

“The experts affirm that this project will transfer the kingdom from an advanced country in exporting oil to a country in exporting the sustainable energy due to the kingdom’s natural potentials to establish environmentally friendly industries through energies of sun, wind and sand rich in silica,” according to the kingdom’s official news service.

The Saudi plan calls for the production of 200 gigawatts of solar power by 2030, coinciding with the oil giant’s plan to diversify its economy.

The domestic part of the kingdom’s solar plan is expected to reduce the cost of solar power production and create more jobs for Saudis, including 100,000 jobs in solar power projects alone, according to the official news agency.

JACK GERARD TO TAKE POSITION WITH MORMON CHURCH: Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute and the oil industry’s top lobbyist in Washington, will take a senior position with the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City after he retires in August.

Gerard plans to serve as general authority seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the church announced this weekend.

• ‘Humbled and honored’: “I am humbled and honored to accept this full-time senior leadership position, which helps lead the 16 million members of our worldwide church. As a general authority of the church, I will have the privilege and opportunity to travel the world to share my personal witness of the Savior, Jesus Christ,” Gerard wrote in an email to API employees Saturday.

• Leadership change: API, the main trade group representing the oil and natural gas industry, announced Gerard’s departure in January after he spent a decade as CEO.

Gerard, 60, has been a prominent energy lobbyist in Washington for decades, leading top fossil fuel industry trade associations from coal to chemicals to natural gas and oil. He joined API after leading the National Mining Association and American Chemistry Council.

RUNDOWN

Wall Street Journal In the oil patch, bigger is no longer better

The Globe and Mail Canada in tough position if Trump administration lessens vehicle mileage standards

Reuters Latin American nations compete for capital in surge of oil auctions

Axios Public energy fears at two-decade low

NPR Kentucky lawmakers limit black lung claims reviews despite epidemic

Quartz India’s biggest renewable-energy deal has been sealed

Bloomberg Bahrain’s biggest oil find since 1932 dwarfs reserves