Norwegian -based energy developer executives equately respond with a Demand against the government said –After the Trump administration stopped the construction of the estimated $ 5 million of the Wind Offshore Wind Energy Empire on the New York coast, citing the need for a fully allowed project.
“We have invested in Empire Wind after obtaining all the necessary approvals and the order to stop the work is now not preceding and, in our opinion, illegal,” said company CEO Anders Omedal, told investors and analysts on April 30 in their first quarter results conference, although it complies with the offset order. “This is a matter of rights and obligations granted by legally issued permits and the security of valid approved investments.”
Empire Wind, which was allowed last year by the Biden administration, plans to have 54 turbines located in a place of 80,000 hectares at 15-30 miles southeast of Long Island. With a capacity of 810 MW, it would feed up to 500,000 homes through underwater cables that connect to a Brooklyn substation, NY
The U.S. Interior Department on April 16 ordered the arrest of the project, calling for an additional review of the environmental impacts of the project, but did not give a deadline or scope for analysis. Ecuinor said that the project, which started last year with the construction of Skanska of its staging terminal in Brooklyn, is 30% complete. Omedal said the company may reserve a loss of deterioration in the second quarter as a result of the Order of the United States Government.
Equinor’s director of Torgrim Reitan said that the suspension was “extraordinary” for a company that has invested $ 60 billion in oil and gas in the United States since 2000. “Equinor invested in good faith,” he told the investment call. “Now this is the holiness of the contracts … and the safety of investments.”
Reitan said that it is “a matter of urgency that the administration clarifies its position, given the delicate position of Empire Wind, which has a complete list of aligned suppliers” to build and equate it.
“Critical Phase”
“This project is in a critical phase,” Reitan said to financial analysts. “We are about to start facilities off the sea and the installation window is now.” An Ecuinor spokesman told Enr that developer Marí Maersk is planned to install turbines, manufactured by Vestas, with the Heerema contractor responsible for the installation of the Monopile Foundation that would begin this year. Skanska is a general contractor of the onshore project in the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, over “with many subcontractors,” said the spokesman. GE BOND is responsible for the substation work on the terminal, with a work of approximately 50%. “The construction of the project has put more than 1,500 people to work in the United States so far,” he said. The project’s investment value has reached about $ 2.5 billion on March 31, Equinor told the call.
The Empire Wind project will be the first wind project on the coast in New York City, to link to the Brooklyn substation next to the terminal and continue to the Gowanus Brooklyn substation, where it would connect to the city’s network.
“It was clear that this is urgent, we have little time. The construction calendar is sensitive to the availability of the contractor [and] The meteorological window, “said CFO Reitan.” This depends on the funding of the project to work and, as you understand well, the lenders are not very secure on the way to go. We have permits and approvals … and we have always supposed that the United States honor contracts. “”
Philip Touaro, CEO of the Energy Sector Analysis, Interstor LLC, told Enr that with the Empire Wind project he stopped, “litigation can be the only way to solve the matter.”
He states that “the suggestion that the process of development of the project or environmental review was” precipitated “is a blatant excuse to use a seemingly legitimate process to remove federal permits for wind projects outside the coast that were already issued by the previous administration”, adding that “this federal revision of permits for all the winds outside the United States, and the fall of the Empire 1 is nothing more than the road that He disguised the policy of politics.
Added Tourtro: “These companies have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases for leases and are now likely to have to litigate to build their own projects. This is a waste of time and sensitive resources, especially at a time when the United States is supposed to be in the midst of” energy emergency “.
