On Monday, President Trump’s Department of the Interior announced that it will refund almost $1 billion to a French multinational oil company.
The company, TotalEnergies, had spent that amount during the Biden administration to secure two leases allowing it to build offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean. The Trump administration, which has taken every step possible to block offshore wind development, is so opposed to this possibility that it’s paying Total to give up those leases — which the company wasn’t even using — in exchange for a promise that Total will invest the money in oil and gas projects off the U.S. Gulf Coast — which it was already doing.
“This is a backdoor deal done with zero transparency, no public process, and no consideration of the impacts to ratepayers in states that had been planning on that offshore wind to meet their energy needs,” said Elizabeth Klein, who led the federal Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under former President Joe Biden.
The administration may have been ... Read more
