North Carolina’s 301-mile coastline has been spared from a potential wind project of TotalEnergies by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The United States will reimburse the company dollar-for-dollar to redirect $1 billion that was designated for leases off the shores of North Carolina and New York, a release from Secretary Doug Burgum’s office says. The French company will instead invest in natural gas projects.
“This agreement is yet another win for President Trump’s commitment to affordable and reliable energy for all Americans,” said Burgum. “Offshore wind is one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers. We welcome TotalEnergies’ commitment to developing projects that produce dependable, affordable power to lower Americans’ monthly bills while providing secure U.S. baseload power today – and in the future.”
The leases were in the Carolina Long Bay area, and the New York Bight area.
TotalEnergies has pledged to not invest in new offshore wind projects in the United States as part of the agreement.
“TotalEnergies is pleased to sign this settlement agreements with the DOI and to support the administration’s energy policy,” said Patrick Pouyanné, chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of TotalEnergies. “Considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest, we have decided to renounce offshore wind development in the United States, in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees.
“Furthermore, these agreements, under which we will reinvest the refunded lease fees to finance the construction of the 29 Mt Rio Grande LNG plant and the development of our oil and gas activities, allows us to support the development of U.S. gas production and export. These investments will contribute to supplying Europe with much-needed LNG from the U.S. and provide gas for U.S. data center development. We believe this is a more efficient use of capital in the United States.”
LNG is an acronym for liquified natural gas.
TotalEnergies is investing in the development of Train 1 to 4 of the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas; and the development of upstream conventional oil in the gulf and of shale gas production.
