Bloomberg American Electric Power’s (AEP) $4.5 billion Wind Catcher project was done in by shaky economics, and may become a teaching moment for other developers planning big clean-energy projects. The company pulled the plug on what would have been the biggest-ever US wind farm. Texas regulators rejected the project because it didn’t offer enough benefits for ratepayers, and Oklahoma came …

Bloomberg BP Plc agreed to pay $10.5 billion, its biggest acquisition in almost two decades, for most of BHP Billiton Ltd.’s onshore US oil and natural gas assets, including in the prized Permian Basin. The deal gives the London-based energy giant a position in the Permian, a swath of west Texas and New Mexico that’s the world’s fastest-growing major oil …

Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc finally gave investors the share buybacks they’ve been demanding, even as profit fell short of expectations despite resurgent crude prices. The Anglo-Dutch energy producer said that it is starting a $25 billion share-repurchase programme, initially buying up $2 billion of stock over three months. That should soothe investors who have grown increasingly anxious about when …

Bloomberg Science fiction writers and technologists have been predicting the arrival of robot butlers for the better part of a century. So far domestic robots have been relatively pedestrian: robot dogs, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers. Rosie of “The Jetsons” fame? Not so much. That may be about to change. Behind the scenes, big tech companies are funding secret projects to …

Bloomberg Back in 2004, when selling CD-ROMs was still a lucrative business, BenQ Materials Corp. thought it was time to get out. In the years that followed, the technology became less mainstream, overtaken by everything from flash drives to online downloads. Now, the Taiwanese electronics parts maker is doing it again. This time, it’s cutting back on a different cash …

Bloomberg Daimler AG will carve itself into three separate units in its biggest overhaul in a decade as the Mercedes-Benz car and truck maker seeks to adapt to the unprecedented shift to self-driving and electric vehicles. The need for change was evident in the German manufacturer’s second-quarter figures that showed another slump in earnings following on from the first three …

Bloomberg Flaws in jet engine fan blades like one that cracked and broke loose in April, killing a Southwest Airlines Co. passenger, have been discovered on planes operated by several carriers, and the manufacturer is moving to further tighten inspections. General Electric Co., part of a venture that makes the engines, found a cracked blade during post-accident inspections of another …

Bloomberg JetBlue Airways Corp.’s pilots approved the first labour contract in the carrier’s history. The four-year pact was approved by 74 percent of those voting, with 98 percent of eligible pilots participating, the Air Line Pilots Association said. The agreement is effective from August 1 and was reached after more than three years of negotiations. The contract raises pay rates …

Bloomberg Delta Air Lines Inc. and United Continental Holdings Inc. are offering free flights for immigrant families detained and separated under President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” crackdown on illegal border crossings. The airlines are providing vouchers for one-way domestic service so that parents and children that have been released can travel to sponsors or relatives in the US. A federal court …

Bloomberg L’Oreal SA posted disappointing sales of mass-market cosmetics, triggering a slide in the share price even as buoyant Chinese demand lifted revenue from high-end products. The French beauty conglomerate’s sales of consumer brands such as Maybelline rose at a less-than-stellar pace of 2.3 percent in the second quarter, the company said. While L’Oreal turned in a much stronger performance …