By Peter Pinedo FOXBusiness
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called the agreement ‘yet another win for President Trump’s commitment to affordable and reliable energy’
The Trump Department of the Interior secured a landmark agreement with energy giant TotalEnergies to redirect nearly $1 billion away from “unreliable” and “ideological” wind farm projects approved under the Biden administration and instead invest in U.S. oil and natural gas as part of the president’s “energy dominance agenda.”
Secretary Doug Burgum announced the agreement with TotalEnergies on Monday at the CERAWeek conference, an annual gathering of global oil and energy leaders in Houston.
TotalEnergies is renouncing its U.S. offshore wind leases and instead investing a total of $928 million in oil, natural gas and liquefied natural gas production in the U.S., according to the department. Additionally, after the department paused all leases for large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in the U.S. due to “national security risks,” TotalEnergies has pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the country.
The department said that “under this innovative agreement driven by President Donald J. Trump’s Energy Dominance Agenda, the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.”
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As part of the agreement, TotalEnergies will invest $928 million in the development of a liquefied natural gas plant in Brownsville, Texas, as well as shale gas production and upstream conventional oil in the Gulf of America.
In turn, the U.S. will terminate wind farm leases in the Carolina Long Bay Area and in the New York Bight area. Both of these leases were granted to TotalEnergies by the Biden administration in 2022. The U.S. will be reimbursing TotalEnergies for these investments.
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Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of TotalEnergies, told Fox News Digital that the company is “pleased” to sign onto the agreement with the DOI and to support the administration’s energy policy.
