Norway’s Equinor said it had suspended work on the offshore wind project Empire Wind 1 following a Monday stop-work order issued by the Trump administration.
The order relates to a pause on the leases of five offshore wind power projects, declared by the Department of the Interior on national security grounds as identified by the Department of War.
Because of these national security concerns, Interior “is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms!” Secretary Burgum posted on X today. “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED. @POTUS is bringing common sense back to energy policy & putting security FIRST!” he added in the post.
Empire Wind 1 is one of the five projects whose leases were suspended. The project, if completed, would have a capacity of 810 MW. The installation was 60% complete as of December 22. The gross book value of the project as of September was $3.1 billion, including the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, which handles the work on the offshore site. Equinor said, as quoted by Reuters, it had drawn some $2.8 billion under a term loan for the project, but if the suspension continued for an extended period of time, it would suffer losses.
The Trump administration has made no secret of its attitude to wind energy, and especially offshore wind. Since President Trump took office, the federal government has clamped down on wind energy projects through stop-work orders and subsidy removals.
The most notorious of these moves became a stop-work order on a nearly completed project being developed by Ørsted, the world’s biggest offshore wind project developer. Ørsted and its joint venture partner Skyborn Renewables were progressing the construction of the Revolution Wind off the Rhode Island coast when the Trump administration issued a stop-work order in August, throwing the project – which is 80% completed – and Ørsted’s operational and financial targets in doubt.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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