Just because there haven't been any big headlines doesn't mean there isn't movement happening, and it's been kind of interesting to see the bits and pieces coming across.
Back in August, Dr Bob Stern, president of the New Jersey activist group Save Long Beach Island (SLBI), sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. It lauded the secretary and his crew for taking the steps they had since assuming office to rein in and reverse the Biden administration's headlong, frenzied dive into offshore wind farm permitting on the Mid Atlantic Coast off New Jersey. The missive also contained suggestions related to a petition the group had submitted to Interior in March, which detailed how the Biden BOEM had ridden roughshod over both the regulations for siting and approval and the expressed concerns of the citizens who would be affected.
...Save Long Beach Island (LBI), Inc., would like to commend you and the Department of the Interior for launching this long overdue overhaul of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) renewable energy rules, as per the announcement in your August 7, 2025 press release. Your leadership in prioritizing American energy security and reexamining existing regulations is greatly appreciated by those of us who have long advocated against unbalanced, non-transparent, unaccountable and environmentally damaging offshore energy development. Moreover, this intent to overhaul the OCS rules appears responsive to Save LBI’s Petition of March 7, 2025 to Revise the OCS rules such that they more closely harmonize with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), so we appreciate the expedition on this request.
In view of the significance of this rulemaking effort, Save LBI respectfully requests that the Department consider an early opportunity for stakeholder engagement—prior to the formal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) is issued. This could potentially take the form of an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) or other pre-rulemaking outreach that solicits innovative ideas before the rule text is still being drafted and developed. Save LBI would very much welcome the opportunity for continued active engagement in the development of these new OCS rules.
Word has just broke last Friday of a court filing, in which the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has announced its intention to do a thorough review of the rulemaking process and that of the approval process for Atlantic Shores and others, which could very well be catastrophic for the offshore wind industry at large.
In a court filing Friday, Matthew Giacona, Trump’s deputy BOEM director, said the federal government plans to re-do the entire review process for the Atlantic Shores and other wind projects. He argued the Biden administration misjudged offshore wind impacts & failed to properly…
— SaveLBI (@saveLBIorg) October 7, 2025
They're planning on redoing it all. Atlantic Shores is merely the first project to go under the microscope.
The Department of Justice told a federal district court that it plans to review and likely change the approval of the Construction and Operation Plan for New Jersey’s Atlantic Shores South offshore wind farm. While the project has largely been abandoned for months, the move is symbolic because it was where candidate Donald Trump, during a 2024 campaign stop, vowed to bring an end to the offshore wind energy sector.
The filing, which was made on September 27, is similar to others the Department of Justice has made as part of pending lawsuits against wind farm projects from Massachusetts to Maryland. In each of the cases, DOJ has asked the court to stay the pending litigation brought by local activist groups, saying it was “potentially needless or wasteful litigation.” The Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Ocean Energy Management are involved in the cases as the local opposition repeatedly challenges the approvals given to the projects.
The Atlantic Shores South project, which would consist of two large offshore wind farms, received its final approval from BOEM in October 2024 for a project that would have been off the southern New Jersey coast. It called for 197 turbines that would have been at least 8.7 miles from Long Beach Island as part of a project to provide 2.8 GW of energy to the state.
The uncertainty over the outcome in approval status and the long, drawn-out trek through the courts if a company sues for an adverse decision is also wreaking havoc with wind industry suppliers. Can they wait it out?
The Trump administration’s attack on the offshore wind industry is squeezing a key revenue stream for the subcontractors that help build wind farms, forcing many to put investment plans on ice.
Fugro NV, a provider of geological data to the energy sector, recently withdrew guidance after issuing three profit warnings in 12 months, partly blaming offshore wind challenges. It also announced a more restrained approach to capital expenditure in 2026, including plans to invest in unmanned service vessels, autonomous ships that can be used for environmental monitoring and hydrographic surveying.
As a supplier to Orsted A/S, the Danish wind farm operator entangled in a battle with President Donald Trump after an almost finished project was halted, Fugro is among smaller companies dealing with the knock-on effects. Fewer projects means those who supply platforms, parts, raw materials and services will see less activity.
...Wind tower maker CS Wind Corp. is cutting 220 jobs at a Danish facility following offshore wind project cancellations. SIF Holding NV, a steel supplier to offshore wind companies, lowered its outlook in August as projects dried up.
Burgum isn't letting any seagrass grow under his feet, and the DoJ filing, asking for a pause in proceedings, expressly says the decision by Interior will most likely render the wind opponents' lawsuits against the projects 'moot.' It almost sounds as if the decision is already in the bag - they're just waiting for the discovery of enough malfeasance in the Biden permitting process to justify it as improper and illegally permitted to begin with.
...The filing states, “At the conclusion of BOEM’s reconsideration proceedings, BOEM will likely make a new agency action, and that action may affect—and potentially moot—plaintiffs’ claims.”
Earlier, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had said the government was reviewing five offshore wind projects, inferring that each would be canceled. While the departments have filed motions to stay the local cases for the projects, the administration, however, suffered a setback in its efforts to challenge Ørsted’s Revolution Wind project. A court barred the government’s efforts to enforce a stop work order on the project, which is 80 percent installed. The Danish company has reported that work resumed while the court cases proceed. The company has also said it was in discussions with the government to resolve the concerns over the project.
Bloomberg reported that BOEM today, October 1, also filed with another federal district court announcing that it will also be reviewing the COP approval for Empire Wind 2, a second project planned by Empire Wind off the coast of New Jersey. The company is working on its phase 1 project after a stop work order in the spring, but it has said that phase 2 was unlikely to proceed at this time because of the changed regulatory environment.
And what are the odds of finding boatloads, huh?
There are already plenty of bodies being unearthed in the hunt. Documents received by a fiscal watchdog group in relation to a massive project off the Rhode Island and Connecticut coasts are already painting a damning picture of the lengths the Biden cultists were willing to go to push these projects forward at any cost and over any objection. Including unforgivable extension allowances for dismantling a farm at the end of its lifetime.
The Biden administration granted major offshore wind projects financial breaks despite internal warnings of increased risks to taxpayers, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Functional Government Initiative (FGI).
Denmark-based Ørsted’s massive “Revolution Wind” project off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut not only received final approval in August 2023 under the Biden administration but also an exception that allowed the company to postpone the funds for dismantling the project at the end of its life for 15 years, according to the documents. Despite internal warnings that this kind of exception “increases the risk to the federal taxpayer,” the Biden administration granted Revolution Wind and Vineyard Wind sweetheart breaks for their decommissioning costs that were estimated at $325 million and $191 million, respectively, according to the documents and FGI.
...A May 2021 internal memo revealed the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) warned the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) that “delaying receipt of financial assurance increases the risk to the federal taxpayer” when BOEM was considering granting Vineyard Wind the 15-year decommissioning cost delay.
Federal rules typically require companies to pre-fund decommissioning to protect taxpayers if a project fails or reaches the end of its life. The Biden administration allowed Ørsted and other developers a special exception to delay those funds, despite offshore wind being relatively untested in the U.S., while cracking down on well-established energy resources like oil, gas and coal.
The wind industry was more special than anyone knew. And it's terrifying.
...“This was essentially a $191 million gamble with our money,” Roderick said at the time of the first discovered decommission cost delay exception. “It’s not often you can put a price on recklessness, but BOEM under its previous leadership was in such a rush to get the risky project underway that it left American taxpayers unprotected.”
FGI argues that the failure of these projects granted exemptions by the Biden administration were not implausible, as Revolution Wind was reportedly a year behind schedule before Trump called for the wind farm reviews.
Not only a gamble with money, but potentially lives and livelihoods. Witness what happened (and is still washing ashore) with Vineyard Wind's SINGLE BLADE failure and that chaos that followed for months for states all around the Nantucket offshore farm.
BREAKING: NEFSA obtained an exclusive photo Monday night of the broken offshore wind turbine that has Nantucket beaches closed during the height of summer - Vineyard Wind claimed the turbine blade was still mostly intact. pic.twitter.com/gkAYrISwew
— NE Fishermen's Stewardship Assoc. (@fishstewardship) July 18, 2024
The time to start crawling up some turbines with a fine-toothed comb is now. It's been nothing but climate grifting lies, cover-ups, and shell games from the get-go.
Industrial wind energy doesn't kill whales, insisted the media. But a new report by a top government scientist reveals that the Biden admin. broke the law in approving Empire Wind, while Revolution Wind is in a crucial "magical space for marine animals" at risk of extinction. pic.twitter.com/8mqekTW7cP
— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) August 26, 2025
There was more good news of an ocean energy sort yesterday. I don't know where they found this judge since most of them haven't been too Trump-friendly, but we'll take it.
Drilling for offshore gas and oil is back, baby.
A federal judge has thrown out the Biden administration's sweeping ban on offshore oil and gas lease sales outside of the Gulf of Mexico and the North Slope of Alaska, allowing future lease sales to proceed in new geographies.
The "withdrawal," released in the final weeks of Biden's time in office, covered all of the lease planning areas of the West and East Coasts of the lower 48 states, parts of the Bering Sea, the Straits of Florida, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. In all, more than 625 million acres of federal seabed were withdrawn from leasing using the president's authority under the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA), and Biden's memorandum claimed that this status would last "indefinitely."
The declaration was the largest lease area withdrawal in U.S. history; however, it only covered areas without active E&P activity. All of the regions with significant oil and gas interest - the central U.S. Gulf, Cook Inlet, and Alaska's Arctic coastline - were not withdrawn.
Multiple oil-producing states joined the American Petroleum Institute in a lawsuit to reverse the withdrawal, but faced a hurdle in the form of an earlier precedent. In 2019, a federal judge ruled that based on the text of the law, a sitting president cannot reverse a previous OCSLA withdrawal once made. The plain language of the statute is mute on this question: unlike several comparable laws governing onshore federal land, it does not explicitly address the question of reversals.
On Thursday, US District Court Judge James D. Cain, Jr. - a Reagan appointee in the Western District of Louisiana - disagreed with the 2019 court opinion and ruled in favor of E&P interests, striking down Biden's declaration.
This can all be done responsibly and efficiently.
Everything by the book and get going.
If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. Ed, David, John, and I are here for it.
COME AT US, BROS!
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