Saving Seafood

Burgum leans away from ‘all-of-the-above’ energy

April 29, 2025 — When he fought for votes in North Dakota’s Republican gubernatorial primary in 2016, tech executive Doug Burgum did not have the financial backing of the state’s powerful oil and gas lobby.

Burgum — who is now Interior secretary — labeled that money a conflict of interest.

As governor, Burgum sought to push North Dakota to be carbon-neutral by 2030. He stressed “the importance of an all-of-the-above energy policy” when then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited the state in 2021. And he chaired a state commission that approved North Dakota’s first injection well for the geologic storage of carbon dioxide.

But as a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Burgum has taken a sharply different tack.

Last week, the Interior Department unveiled a plan to speed up the development of domestic energy and critical minerals. The new emergency permitting procedures don’t apply to renewable sources such as wind and solar, reflecting Trump’s priorities and his Jan. 20 energy “emergency” executive order. Carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS, was also left out.

The new policy arrived days after Interior moved to halt construction on the Empire Wind project off the coast of New York, arguing it was approved “without sufficient analysis.” That has left observers wondering what’s next from Burgum.

Read the full story at E&E News

Interior won’t release evidence for blocked NY wind farm

April 23, 2025 — The Interior Department says it stopped work on a New York offshore wind farm because the project’s permit was based on “bad & flawed science.”

It has yet to produce that science.

Interior has offered little explanation for its decision last week to halt work on Empire Wind. Its public statements have been limited to a pair of social media posts by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who initially announced the decision on X last week and followed up with a post Monday saying the move was based on findings from NOAA.

Read the full story at E&E News

Interior defends Virginia offshore wind farm in court

May 7, 2024 — The Biden administration and the developer of a $9.8 billion wind farm off of Virginia Beach, Virginia, assured a federal court Friday that the project has all necessary approvals, amid claims that construction would harm the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The joint court filing from the Interior Department and Dominion Energy comes in response to a request to halt work on the massive Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which is slated to include 176 turbines and is the largest project of its kind currently under development in the United States.

Dominion and Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management filed their response following an order from Judge Loren AliKhan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking clarity on whether NOAA Fisheries — which handles Endangered Species Act consultations for marine life — had approved mitigation plans to protect the vulnerable right whale.

Read the full story at E&E News

Suit: Agencies fail to protect marine species from oil

January 27, 2022 — A conservation group says in a lawsuit that the U.S. government failed to protect endangered whales and other animals by underestimating the potential for an oil spill like a recent crude pipeline leak off California’s coast.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday saying Interior Department agencies and the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t ensure offshore oil and gas production wouldn’t jeopardize endangered and threatened species in accordance with U.S. law.

The lawsuit says the Service found in a 2017 analysis that oil and gas production wouldn’t likely have an adverse effect on threatened marine life off California’s coast, there was a low likelihood of an offshore oil spill and if one occurred, it would likely involve no more than 8,400 gallons (31,800 liters). The suit asks the court to vacate the analysis and bar new oil activity unless government agencies comply with the law protecting endangered species.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

 

The first offshore wind lease sale under Biden is coming soon. Will the fishing industry intervene?

January 11, 2022 — The Interior Department is expected to greenlight the first offshore wind lease sale under President Biden as soon as this week, a move that would lower the nation’s reliance on the fossil fuels that are dangerously warming the planet.

But the effort has sparked concern from the fishing industry, which contends that towering turbines in the waters off New England could harm fishermen’s catches and livelihoods. It’s the latest sign of tensions between Biden’s ambitious clean-energy agenda and industry interests concerned about its economic impact.

The details: Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is poised to issue a final sale notice for the New York Bight, a nearly 800,000-acre area of the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance has emerged as the fishing industry’s main voice in disputes over offshore wind. The group has argued that fishermen should receive compensation for losses caused by turbines in commercial fishing grounds.

Annie Hawkins, executive director of the alliance, told The Climate 202 that the group remains concerned about offshore wind development in the New York Bight. She said the turbines could prevent fishing altogether if they are spaced less than a mile apart.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

MAINE: Gov. Mills urges federal government to include fishermen in offshore wind decisions

November 8, 2021 — Gov. Janet Mills on Friday urged the federal government to include fishermen in plans for commercial offshore wind projects in the Gulf of Maine.

In a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Mills said she supports the Biden Administration’s commitment to offshore wind but encouraged them to take a research-driven approach.

“My administration has committed to pursuing offshore wind energy in a way that works best – a thoughtful, deliberate and responsible approach that leads with listening to those for whom offshore wind may not be viewed as opportunity but as a threat to their way of life,” she wrote.

Read the full story at Spectrum News 13

 

Interior takes major steps on offshore wind in Atlantic, Gulf

November 1, 2021 — The Biden administration is planning to extend the fledgling offshore wind sector’s footprint deeper into the southern Atlantic and into the Gulf of Mexico, Interior Department officials announced yesterday.

In addition to taking the first steps to offering lease sales off the coasts of North Carolina, Louisiana and Texas, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will begin the environmental review of a Massachusetts offshore wind project, the 11th proposed wind array advanced by the administration this year.

“These milestones represent great potential for addressing climate change through a clean, reliable, domestic energy resource while providing good-paying jobs,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement, adding a promise to “responsibly and sustainably” move on the administration’s offshore wind goals.

Read the full story at E&E News

The U.S. Wants to Turn Both Coasts Into Massive Offshore Windfarms

October 18, 2021 — The Biden administration is planning a rapid buildout of offshore wind turbines along the U.S. coastline.

At a wind power industry conference in Boston on Wednesday, Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior, announced her intention to begin leasing federal waters off the east coast of the Mid-Atlantic, North and South Carolina, the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Maine, California and Oregon to wind power developers by 2025.

“The Interior Department is laying out an ambitious road map as we advance the administration’s plans to confront climate change, create good-paying jobs, and accelerate the nation’s transition to a cleaner energy future,” Haaland said. “We have big goals to achieve a clean energy economy and Interior is meeting the moment.”

The agency will begin by searching for leasable waters in which to create seven major commercial offshore wind farms, meeting a White House directive to substantially build out wind technology and establish well-paying clean jobs. In March, president Biden announced plans to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power (enough to power more than 10-million U.S. homes for a year) by 2030, employing 44,000 people along the way. This would prevent 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, the administration wrote in the announcement, creating more than $12-billion in capital investment.

Read the full story at VICE

 

NEW YORK: Offshore Oil Drilling Is on Hold

May 3, 2019 — The Trump administration’s plan to allow oil and gas exploration and extraction off the Atlantic Coast is apparently on indefinite hold.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that a federal judge’s March declaration that President Trump’s order revoking a ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic is illegal may force the federal Department of the Interior to wait until that case is resolved before a final decision can be made about which offshore areas would be opened to the fossil-fuel industry.

Separately, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, with the musician Billy Joel by his side, signed legislation on Monday to ban offshore drilling in New York State waters. The legislation, according to a release from the governor’s office, will bar the state from granting permits for oil or gas exploration or drilling in offshore areas controlled by the state.

“This bill says no way are you going to drill off the coast of Long Island and New York,” the governor said in the statement, “because we must lead the way as an alternative to what this federal government is doing.”

The March decision by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason once again rendered 3.8 million acres of the Atlantic Ocean, along with 125 million acres of the Arctic Ocean, off limits to exploration and drilling under a ban President Obama enacted in December 2016, shortly before leaving office.

“The recent announcement that the Trump administration is backing down on oil and gas exploration off the Atlantic Seaboard is good news,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said in an email on Tuesday, “as is Governor Cuomo’s signing yesterday of state legislation that would prohibit drilling for oil or gas exploration in state offshore waters.”

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

Interior announces region-wide oil and gas lease sale for Gulf

February 15, 2019 — The Interior Department and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that BOEM will offer 78 million acres for a region-wide lease sale scheduled for March 2019. The sale would include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Lease Sale 252, scheduled to be livestreamed from New Orleans, will be the fourth offshore sale under the 2017-2022 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program (National OCS Program). Under this program, 10 region-wide lease sales are scheduled for the Gulf, where resource potential and industry interest are high, and oil and gas infrastructure is well established. Two Gulf lease sales will be held each year and include all available blocks in the combined Western, Central, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico Planning Areas.

Lease Sale 252 will include approximately 14,696 unleased blocks, located from three to 231 miles offshore, in the Gulf’s Western, Central and Eastern planning areas in water depths ranging from 9′ to more than 11,115′ (three to 3,400 meters). The following areas are excluded from the lease sale: blocks subject to the congressional moratorium established by the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006; blocks adjacent to or beyond the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone in the area known as the northern portion of the Eastern Gap; and whole blocks and partial blocks within the current boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.

The Gulf of Mexico OCS, covering about 160 million acres, is estimated to contain about 48 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable gas.

Revenues received from OCS leases (including high bids, rental payments and royalty payments) are directed to the U.S. Treasury, certain Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund.

Read the full story at Workboat