Norwegian oil and energy company Equinor has won some relief from the US Trump Administration’s latest threats against Equinor’s huge investment in offshore wind power for New York. A federal court in Washington DC granted Equinor’s Empire Wind project a preliminary injunction on Thursday, which basically suspends the administration’s order to suspend all work on it.
The company is thus able to “safely” resume work on the project that Trump’s government, which favours fossil- over renewable energy, had disupted for the second time just before the Christmas holidays. Equinor’s Empire Offshore Wind LLC responded to the latest disruption by filing suit against the US Department of the Interior’s suspension order, which claimed Empire’s wind turbines would disupt radar systems and threaten US national security. Equinor strongly objects, and prevailed in its legal effort to get the project back on track while its lawsuit against the US Department of the Interior proceeds.
The Empire Wind project is more than 60 percent finished and has been developed under contract with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. The project aims to provide electricity for around 500,000 homes in New York. At stake also is Equinor’s nearly USD 5 billion investment in the project, thousands of jobs, redevelopment of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal and future prospects for foreign investment in Trump’s USA.
NewsinEnglish.no staff
