Overview
- Interior and TotalEnergies signed the settlement Monday at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, canceling two offshore wind leases off New York and North Carolina.
- TotalEnergies will invest $928 million in 2026 in the Rio Grande LNG project in Texas and in U.S. oil and shale gas, after which the government will reimburse the same amount.
- The deal ends the 2022 Attentive Energy (New York Bight) and Carolina Long Bay leases, which developers had estimated could produce roughly four gigawatts of power.
- TotalEnergies pledged to avoid any new U.S. offshore wind projects, a step Interior framed as favoring reliable baseload power as environmental groups and several governors denounced the payout as a misuse of taxpayer money.
- Energy lawyers say the reimbursement will likely draw on the Justice Department’s Judgment Fund, and other leaseholders such as RWE may now seek similar refunds, raising broader risks for state clean-energy targets after courts recently overturned federal stop-work orders on several projects.