By Kennedy Maize
The on-again, off-again, Trump-again administration has reversed course and told a large, halted offshore wind project to resume construction. 
The Interior Department has told Norway’s Equinor to get back to work on its multibillion-dollar, 800-MW Empire 1 wind project some 14 miles off the shore of Long Island just a month after the Trump administration put a stop on the project. Equinor’s U.S. affiliate (NYSE:EQNR), according to the Wall Street Journal, was about 30% and $2.5 billion into the project when the Trump administration in mid-April ordered construction to stop. Equinor reportedly was spending some $50 million a week during the suspension.
The project got started in 2017 and won Biden administration approval to begin construction in 2024. The current schedule calls for the project to begin delivering power to the mainland in 2027.
The stop order was no surprise, given Trump’s long-standing antipathy toward offshore wind. In 2006, Trump bought 1,800 acres of shorefront property in Scotland to develop a golf course. He was bothered by some ocean wind turbines off the property, claiming they were ugly. He sued and, in December 2015, lost in Britain’s highest court.
One of Trump’s first actions when he claimed the Oval Office for the second time in January, was a January 20 executive order, “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects.”
On January 20, Wall Street Journal reported, “‘We aren’t going to do the wind thing,’ Trump told his supporters Jan. 20, twirling a finger in a circle to indicate the rotation of a turbine blade. ‘Big ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood.’”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on April 16 followed up with an order stopping Empire 1 construction. Days latter, discussing his reasons for stopping the project, Burgum on Twitter cited a mysterious alleged study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that was critical of the Empire 1 project.
Burgum tweeted on April 21, “Scientists at @NOAA have revealed that the Biden administration’s rushed approval of the Empire Wind project was built on bad & flawed science.”
Canary Media tried and failed to get access to the alleged NOAA report. Bergum refused to respond to an inquiry. Equinor was unsuccessful in getting a copy, as was Sen. Chuck Shumer, the Democratic minority leader. A career Interior employee granted anonymity fearing retribution, told Canary Media, “Nobody’s seen this report. My personal opinion is that it’s all bullshit.”
The Trump executive order and Interior’s halt of construction was legally questionable, according to several experienced energy attorneys. But Equinor and New York chose a different course to overturn the decision: political lobbying.
New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and Equinor Renewable Americas President Molly Morris mounted a personal lobbying campaign targeting Trump, according to the Washington Post. They argued that not lifting the stop work order soon would result in the loss of thousands of high-paying construction and associated jobs.
“Hochul had three roughly one-hour calls with President Donald Trump, the most recent on Sunday, asking for the stop-work order to be rescinded, according to a person familiar with the matter,” the Post wrote. “In the calls, she emphasized the need for projects that bring more energy to New York, while highlighting the number of jobs Empire Wind would create.”
The Post account speculated that a wink-and-nod agreement on resurrecting a gas pipeline project that was abandoned in 2020 after eight years of regulatory and court wrangling, including opposition by New York. The Constitution Pipeline would have moved fracked gas from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale region to the Empire State. It folded in part because of regulatory headaches, and also because of low natural gas prictes.
After the green light to resume work on the wind project, Burgum tweeted, “I am encouraged by Governor Hochul’s comments about her willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity. Americans who live in New York and New England would see significant economic benefits and lower utility costs from increased access to reliable, affordable, clean American natural gas.”
Equinor’s Morris and her Norwegian boss Anders Opedal met with White House National Economic Council head Kevin Hassett, who Morris described as sympathetic. He reportedly said, “We feel strongly that this is bigger than Empire Wind and the offshore wind industry. This is about energy projects that are under construction being stopped.”
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