Overview
- Led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, attorneys general from New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont filed the complaint on Tuesday, June 2, asking the U.S. District Court in Washington to vacate the March settlement and block enforcement of the lease cancellations.
- The March agreement reimbursed TotalEnergies about $928 million for two leases with roughly $795 million tied to the New York Attentive Energy lease and required the company to invest the refunded money in U.S. oil, gas and LNG projects instead of building offshore wind.
- The states say the Interior Department canceled the lease without the hearing and formal findings the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act requires and that the Justice Department improperly used the federal Judgment Fund to make a reimbursement when no imminent lawsuit existed.
- Plaintiffs say the canceled Attentive Energy project could have produced about 3 gigawatts of clean power, supplied nearly one million homes, saved billions on consumer bills and supported more than a thousand union jobs in New York.
- The case will test the administration’s new ‘refund-and-reinvest’ tactic after prior court losses, is drawing congressional and state oversight, and could change investor and state planning for future U.S. offshore wind development.