HOUSTON: The United States and TotalEnergies on Monday (Mar 23) signed an agreement to end the French company’s offshore US wind farm projects and redirect those funds towards fossil fuel production, with the US interior secretary saying the deal was worth “nearly US$1 billion.”
US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum made the announcement at the annual CERAWeek conference in Houston, at an event where he appeared alongside TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne, after which both men signed the agreement.
“We’re partnering with TotalEnergies to unleash nearly US$1 billion that was tied up in a lease deposit that was directed towards the prior administration’s subsidies that were pushing expensive weather-dependent offshore wind,” said Burgum.
Pouyanne welcomed the deal, saying it redirected TotalEnergies’s US$928 million investment in two wind farm leases off the North Carolina and New York coasts into US natural gas projects, in particular the Rio Grande LNG plant.
French giant TotalEnergies had four gigawatts (GW) of offshore projects under development, including 3 GW for the New York Bight project and 1 GW in North Carolina.
But at the end of 2024, Pouyanne announced that they were “put on hold” due to the unlikelihood of obtaining federal licenses from the Trump administration.
Under former president Joe Biden, the United States had accelerated progress on wind farm construction as part of its fight against climate change.
US President Donald Trump, however, has reversed course on many of Biden’s climate policies, taking particular aim at wind power.
