Trump Administration’s Offshore Wind Deal with TotalEnergies Exposed as Taxpayer-Funded Subsidy for Oil and Gas

New Documents Reveal Flaws in Trump Administration’s Offshore Wind Deal with TotalEnergies

The Trump administration’s claim that canceling TotalEnergies’ offshore wind leases would benefit American taxpayers has been undermined by newly released settlement documents. The deal, announced in March 2024, involved paying the French energy giant nearly $1 billion to walk away from offshore wind projects in the U.S. The administration framed it as a fair exchange: TotalEnergies would receive reimbursement for lease costs in exchange for redirecting funds to U.S. oil and gas development.

However, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management posted the settlement agreements online on April 12, 2024, revealing that the terms were far less restrictive than initially suggested. The documents show that TotalEnergies did not need to make any new investments to qualify for the payout.

TotalEnergies Could Use Existing Oil and Gas Spending to Qualify for $928 Million

Contrary to the administration’s claims, the settlement allowed TotalEnergies to submit receipts for oil and gas investments it had already made—including spending dating back to November 2023. The terms required the company to spend an equivalent amount on “conventional energy projects” within a specific timeframe: November 18, 2025, to September 30, 2026.

Eligible expenditures included:

• Direct capital expenditures on TotalEnergies’ own oil and gas projects
• Funds funneled through joint ventures
• Spending on the Rio Grande LNG export terminal, a project for which TotalEnergies had already made a final investment decision in September 2023

Once the company deployed the required cash, it could submit a third-party audit of its receipts to the Interior Department, which would then cancel the leases. The settlement explicitly stated that TotalEnergies had to actually spend the money—not just commit to spending it.

In the end, TotalEnergies spent the full $928 million in less than 21 weeks. The two leases involved were:

• Carolina Long Bay lease (off the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina) – canceled April 2, 2024
• Attentive Energy lease (off the coast of Northern New Jersey) – canceled April 13, 2024

Critics Call the Deal a ‘Sweetheart Arrangement’ Benefiting TotalEnergies

Kit Kennedy, managing director for power, climate, and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, criticized the agreement, stating:

"The inclusion of the Rio Grande project is another way in which the agreement appears to be a sweetheart deal, or a collusive arrangement. The irony of handing a billion dollars to this developer at a time when Americans are struggling to pay their electricity bills and struggling to keep afloat cannot be overstated."

"To be clear, this billion dollars is coming from us taxpayers, and the net result of these agreements will be to increase electricity bills for Americans."

Kennedy argued that the deal effectively compensated TotalEnergies for not building offshore wind in the U.S., despite the administration’s claims of mutual benefit.

TotalEnergies did not respond to emailed requests for comment on the settlement terms.

Interior Department Defends the Agreement

The Department of the Interior did not provide direct answers to questions about the deal but issued a statement saying:

"As