A massive New York offshore wind project may soon be abandoned mid-construction due to a mysterious report that few people in Washington appear to have seen except Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, one Fox News reporter, and the scientists who apparently wrote it.
“Scientists at [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] have revealed that the Biden administration’s rushed approval of the Empire Wind project was built on bad & flawed science,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum posted to X on April 21, five days after he issued a stop-work order that halted the Empire Wind 1 project and shocked the industry. His social media posts implied that findings from federal scientists at NOAA were the basis for the extreme measure. Construction can’t restart until the Interior Department performs “further reviews,” he wrote.
Those apparently damning NOAA findings, however, have not been made public. Burgum’s office did not respond to Canary Media’s requests to share them. Nor have they been shared with Equinor, the project developer. As of May 14, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, hadn’t seen them either, despite repeated requests. Even key members of Burgum’s own staff in the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s renewable energy office have not seen it, Canary Media has learned.
“Nobody’s seen this report,” said a career employee at the Interior Department who Canary Media granted anonymity to speak freely for fear of retribution. “My personal opinion is that it’s all bullshit.”
The lack of clarity raises questions about the basis of the Interior Department’s initial decision, and what, exactly, its ongoing review is looking at. Desperate for an answer, Equinor has resorted to filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the report. That route could take months or years to deliver — time the project simply can’t afford.
The delays have created an “urgent, unsustainable situation,” according to one Empire Wind executive, who told the Associated Press last week that the company was days away from giving up on the renewable energy project. The costs of idle boats and grounded workers are just too high, she said, bleeding the company of $50 million each week.
About two weeks into at-sea construction, on April 16, Burgum sent a letter to BOEM, a branch of the Interior, that halted the at-sea work. In Burgum’s statement about the NOAA scientists’ findings, posted on X days later, he linked to a Fox News article that summarizes the contents of a “study” from NOAA, a sub-agency of the Commerce Department that works closely with BOEM to ensure offshore wind and other ocean energy developments do not run afoul of U.S. laws.
The Fox News journalist appears to be the first and only reporter to access the study’s contents.
Industry groups fear Burgum’s order sets a dangerous precedent for vaporizing energy projects mid-construction on the premise of politics.
“Stopping work on the fully federally permitted Empire Wind 1 offshore project should send chills across all industries investing in and holding contracts with the United States government,” said Liz Burdock, president and CEO of Oceantic Network, an offshore wind industry group.
Interior staff left in the dark
Documents obtained by Canary Media indicate that staffers in BOEM’s Office of Renewable Energy Programs (OREP) have been denied access to the report.
OREP is the government’s “hub” for offshore wind permitting and federal coordination, said the Interior employee who spoke with Canary Media. Its staff are in constant contact with offshore wind developers, the person added, from the time of lease purchase to the point where “steel goes in the water.” It’s not uncommon, they explained, for a developer and their assigned OREP point-of-contact to meet a few times each month.
The Interior employee said that personnel within OREP, including top-level figures, were not alerted of Burgum’s order until the day the news broke: “There was no BOEM press release … nothing internal went out.”
When it comes to the Empire Wind block, Burgum appears to be keeping BOEM in the dark.
The Interior staffer said that, to their knowledge, no one at OREP has been explicitly asked to help with the ongoing review of Empire Wind’s approval that Burgum announced in April.
But a few days after the news broke, OREP was tapped to put together a spreadsheet that summarized “concerns” about Empire Wind, according to the Interior staffer. The summary was prepared by OREP staff and sent to one of the office’s supervisors within the last week, according to emails shared with Canary Media. The spreadsheet listed all concerns raised by the public and other federal agencies during the eight years Empire Wind went from lease sale to full approval.
For each concern raised about Empire Wind, OREP staff were instructed in an email seen by Canary Media to succinctly summarize “BOEM’s response, the extent to which the issue was fully addressed, BOEM’s view of whether the concern is mitigated, and whether there is new information that has been identified since [construction and operations] approval that would change the finding or outcome.”
The spreadsheet includes hundreds of concerns — whether they are valid or not — that the public submitted in response to the Empire Wind’s environmental impact assessment. OREP staff were instructed to capture as many of them as possible in this “summary.”
The Interior staffer said the whole exercise smacked of a fishing expedition — “saying there is a problem and then they have to go searching for a problem.”
Wind company fails to nab report
Equinor, the wind farm’s developer, has also been in the dark.
