Ex-Interior Officials Warn Wind Buyout Deals Lack Legal Basis
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- Liz Klein, former director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and Tony Irish, a former Interior associate solicitor, told Utility Dive the wind lease cancellation deals lack any legal precedent and create a new template that future administrations could weaponize against any industry.
- The Interior Department has struck agreements with four lease developers covering roughly 8.6 GW of potential capacity, totaling $1.8 billion in reimbursement payments, with companies required to invest an equal amount in oil, gas, or LNG infrastructure.
- Global Infrastructure Partners committed up to $765 million — the original price it paid for the Bluepoint Wind lease offshore New York and New Jersey — into a U.S.-based LNG facility as its reimbursement reinvestment.
- Golden State Wind will be eligible to recover approximately $120 million in lease fees after making an equal investment in U.S. oil and gas assets, energy infrastructure, or Gulf Coast LNG projects, per Interior.
- Klein argued the arrangements are illegal because "no agency has authority to just give money away to companies, in exchange for those companies to invest in various energy projects that themselves are generating profits for those companies."
- Irish warned that if the deals go unchallenged, "there's nothing to stop a future Democratic administration from pursuing similar types of arrangements where they claim they're going to sue conventional oil and gas, or deepwater drillers in the Gulf Coast."
- Reps. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) wrote to TotalEnergies calling the earlier deal "likely illegal" and saying it "bypasses the system Congress created to prevent corruption," with Democratic lawmakers saying they plan to investigate.
Why it matters: If these unprecedented deal structures stand, they could let any future administration funnel taxpayer dollars to private companies through 'settlements' of non-existent agency actions — rewarding aligned industries without congressional authorization. The $1.8 billion in question and 8.6 GW of cancelled clean-energy capacity directly affect states like New York that had banked on offshore wind development in those lease areas.
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