Make America a Net Energy Importer Again: The Uniparty in Action

[Tiny]

Yesterday the Trump administration suspended five offshore wind projects. In terms of capex, they were 35% to 75% complete. One was already generating electricity from the project's first phase.

This is every bit as stupid as the Biden administration's suspension of drilling permits and oil and gas leases on federal lands and the federal offshore.

So now who's going to invest in massive, multibillion dollar offshore oil and gas and wind projects in the USA? Years, or over a decade can elapse between construction and start up. If the Democrats are in power you've got to worry if they'll ban drilling. If it's the Republicans, whether they'll jerk the rug out from under the wind projects.

Hell, if you want to, jerk all the subsidies and tax breaks for wind, and let the projects proceed. That's not ideal. After all, companies invested billions based on commitments made by the federal government. But it pales by the side of terminating projects companies already spent billions on, if that's what Trump's trying to do.

Trump stranded capital with his trade wars. The Chinese factories couldn't export to the USA, so people built factories in places like Vietnam. Then he jacked tariffs up on Vietnamese goods to 46%, so I guess people were supposed to abandon capacity there and move to Guatemala. Thankfully, Trump saw the light and backed off of Vietnam. The golf course and real estate his family's developing there might have had something to do with that, but no matter.

But this shit is about 10X worse. He's trying to do the same thing, in the USA, simply because he doesn't like wind. And yeah, I'm sure without subsidies the offshore projects wouldn't have made sense at the outset. But now that 75% of the project's built, why on God's Green Earth would you axe it?

Hopefully the courts will come to the rescue, like they did when Biden went after the oil companies.

Insane.

[SpeedRacerXXX]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Yesterday the Trump administration suspended five offshore wind projects. In terms of capex, they were 35% to 75% complete. One was already generating electricity from the project's first phase.

This is every bit as stupid as the Biden administration's suspension of drilling permits and oil and gas leases on federal lands and the federal offshore.

So now who's going to invest in massive, multibillion dollar offshore oil and gas and wind projects in the USA? Years, or over a decade can elapse between construction and start up. If the Democrats are in power you've got to worry if they'll ban drilling. If it's the Republicans, whether they'll jerk the rug out from under the wind projects.

Hell, if you want to, jerk all the subsidies and tax breaks for wind, and let the projects proceed. That's not ideal. After all, companies invested billions based on commitments made by the federal government. But it pales by the side of terminating projects companies already spent billions on, if that's what Trump's trying to do.

Trump stranded capital with his trade wars. The Chinese factories couldn't export to the USA, so people built factories in places like Vietnam. Then he jacked tariffs up on Vietnamese goods to 46%, so I guess people were supposed to abandon capacity there and move to Guatemala. Thankfully, Trump saw the light and backed off of Vietnam. The golf course and real estate his family's developing there might have had something to do with that, but no matter.

But this shit is about 10X worse. He's trying to do the same thing, in the USA, simply because he doesn't like wind. And yeah, I'm sure without subsidies the offshore projects wouldn't have made sense at the outset. But now that 75% of the project's built, why on God's Green Earth would you axe it?

Hopefully the courts will come to the rescue, like they did when Biden went after the oil companies.

Insane.

Agreed.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/1...party-00704170

[Yssup Rider]

He is a total and unparalleled idiot, the likes of which have never been seen before.

[farmstud60]

I am not sure of this is true, but heard the windmills were interfering with radar.

[Yssup Rider]

Originally Posted by farmstud60

I am not sure of this is true, but heard the windmills were interfering with radar.

Not interfering. Visible to radar. Approved after multiple permit applications to multiple government permitting authority.

You heard what you wanted to hear.

Billions have been invested. The farm is operational.

You wanna close that because Trump loves black gold?

Figured.

[Mort Watt]

To be fair to farmstud, he did say "not sure" if true. Recognize the willingness to debate....

Yssup's response is correct, though.

Thanks for the OP, Tiny. I planned on ranting about this today...only to find that you have done it better than I could.

This is such motherfucking bullshit.

HOW can you defend these policies, MAGA? We need to optimize all available sources of energy. China understands this. And it is just one more of the ways that they are going to kick our fucking asses for decades to come....

.

[texassapper]

We won't have sensible energy policy in the US until we start building Nuke reactors... maybe thorium salt reactors? small and unlikely to meltdown because of their design....

Anything less is just a waste of time...

Looks like we will have to do it on Mars with Musk instead...

[MisterMeat]

And now you see why Trump has massed a flotilla around Venezuela.
Hint: it ain’t about drugs, since fentanyl is being manufactured in China and Mexico.

Don the Con has turned the US Navy into the Pirates of the Carribean while he continues to make the United States the laughingstock of the world.

Putin is loving every minute of this chaos.

[pxmcc]

.

[Precious_b]

Originally Posted by texassapper

We won't have sensible energy policy in the US until we start building Nuke reactors... maybe thorium salt reactors? small and unlikely to meltdown because of their design....

Anything less is just a waste of time...

Looks like we will have to do it on Mars with Musk instead...

Nuke is the cleanest. But two things are of a concern. The oversite of building a plant since contractors like to cut corners and they don't care about the consequences of such except not to be caught. And the cutting of research. That is a big thing that could be paying BIG dividends. Hell, I heard France was able to keep a fusion, YES fusion!, reaction going for somewhere around 20 seconds to maybe just more than a minute. Thats amazing!

So, don't cut budgets for agencies that make a safe reactor and keep the monies for studies so that we can pave the way to a clean fusion reactor.

Originally Posted by MisterMeat

And now you see why Trump has massed a flotilla around Venezuela.
Hint: it ain’t about drugs, since fentanyl is being manufactured in China and Mexico.

Don the Con has turned the US Navy into the Pirates of the Carribean while he continues to make the United States the laughingstock of the world.

Putin is loving every minute of this chaos.

You think its because Venezuela refused to give a kick back to donny like the Honduran guy must have?

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by Mort Watt

To be fair to farmstud, he did say "not sure" if true. Recognize the willingness to debate....

Yssup's response is correct, though.

Thanks for the OP, Tiny. I planned on ranting about this today...only to find that you have done it better than I could.

Originally Posted by SpeedRacerXXX

Agreed.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/1...party-00704170

Originally Posted by farmstud60

I am not sure of this is true, but heard the windmills were interfering with radar.

Speedracer's link did it much better than my post Mort Watt. It's worth a read.

Earlier this year the WSJ editorial board came out guns blazing, criticizing the Trump administration's building halt for the offshore Revolution wind power project. Today though, they ran a piece that brings up Farmstud's concerns, and rightly blasts Democratic politicians for doing to oil and gas what Trump's doing to wind power. Like you, I suspect the national security risk is minimal or nonexistent. I think it's an excuse to suspend the projects because Trump doesn't like wind power, just as he used national security concerns to try to justify tariffs. Here are excerpts from the WSJ article,

Democrats are fuming after the Trump Administration on Monday paused leases for several offshore wind projects. Well, well. Maybe they will now appreciate the need for permitting reform so projects aren’t subject to double regulatory jeopardy.

The Interior Department cited national-security risks in halting wind projects off the coast of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia. It said the pause would provide time to work with states and developers to mitigate security risks identified by the Defense Department in “recently completed classified reports.”

It’s hard to assess these risks without seeing the reports. But Interior said unclassified reports “have long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference called ‘clutter,’” which “obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.”

A Biden Energy Department report in 2024 noted that reducing false alarms from wind interference could cause threats to the homeland to fly, literally, under the radar. “To date, no mitigation technology has been able to fully restore the technical performance of impacted radars,” the report said.

Democrats say the Administration is using national security as a pretext to stop wind projects the President dislikes. And Mr. Trump has claimed dubious national-security reasons to justify tariffs and his $100,000 fee on H-1B visas for skilled workers.

Yet these are the same Democrats who cheered Joe Biden’s cancellation of oil and gas leases in Alaska. Their friends in the climate lobby also routinely abuse the National Environmental Policy Act by filing lawsuits to revoke permits for fossil-fuel projects, even after they’re built.

West Virginia’s Mountain Valley Pipeline was more than 90% complete when Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals judges canceled its permits. Congress had to pass a law to let the developer finish the pipeline so more gas could flow from Appalachia to the Southeast.

A liberal federal judge in 2020 ordered Energy Transfer to halt the oil flow and empty the Dakota Access Pipeline, which had been operating for three years. The D.C. Circuit stayed the order, but the legal battles continue. The Army Corps of Engineers on Friday issued a new 464-page environmental review for the pipeline.

And don’t forget how Northeast Democrats have used phony environmental concerns to block natural-gas pipelines. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo nixed a permit for the Constitution pipeline, which would have delivered cheap gas from Pennsylvania to his state, after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. led protests.

In 2022 Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey boasted she had “stopped two gas pipelines from coming into this state.” Now these same Democrats say they need offshore wind to keep their lights on. They wouldn’t if they hadn’t tried to banish fossil fuels. Gas plants can produce electricity at some 80% lower cost than offshore wind, which doesn’t provide reliable power at all hours of the day anyway.

Democrats who are angry about the Trump wind pause are making an implicit case for a permitting reform that passed the House last week. The bill would prevent federal agencies from canceling project permits without a developer's consent and would limit lawsuits, in part by requiring them to be filed within 150 days of a permit’s issuance.

The goal is to prevent all types of projects from getting stuck in limbo—including off-shore wind. As we reported this week, 195 House Democrats voted no on the bill. Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said Monday that Democrats won’t compromise on permitting because of the Trump wind pause.

...The reason permitting reforms have languished in Congress is because Democrats like Mr. Whitehouse take orders from the climate lobby and reject compromises like the House bill that would make it harder to obstruct energy projects. If you want to know the real reason the U.S. may soon be experiencing blackouts, this is it.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-t...nion_lead_pos3

[txdot-guy]

Originally Posted by Tiny

Speedracer's link did it much better than my post Mort Watt. It's worth a read.

Earlier this year the WSJ editorial board came out guns blazing, criticizing the Trump administration's building halt for the offshore Revolution wind power project. Today though, they ran a piece that brings up Farmstud's concerns, and rightly blasts Democratic politicians for doing to oil and gas what Trump's doing to wind power. Like you, I suspect the national security risk is minimal or nonexistent. I think it's an excuse to suspend the projects because Trump doesn't like wind power, just as he used national security concerns to try to justify tariffs.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-t...nion_lead_pos3

There’s a certain amount of truth in this opinion piece but I think they are missing the point.

The amount of damage done by the oil and gas and coal industry is massive and ongoing. Cleaning up after the oil and gas industry is significantly more difficult and expensive than cleaning up after a wind farm problem.

These regulations they rail against are there because we’ve learned over the decades to distrust the oil industry’s promises to fix what they break.

That WSJ editorial had the stench of sour grapes all over it.

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by txdot-guy

There’s a certain amount of truth in this opinion piece but I think they are missing the point.

The amount of damage done by the oil and gas...industry is massive and ongoing. Cleaning up after the oil and gas industry is significantly more difficult and expensive than cleaning up after a wind farm problem.

These regulations they rail against are there because we’ve learned over the decades to distrust the oil industry’s promises to fix what they break.

That WSJ editorial had the stench of sour grapes all over it.

I don't agree at all. Please help me understand. Could you kindly elaborate. What has the oil and gas (not coal) industry broken? What damage has the industry done? What are examples where the industry hasn't cleaned up after itself? And how does the damage/breakage/clean up compare to the benefits we've realized from oil and gas production and consumption?

Please confine your reply to the last couple of decades and to the USA. Anything else is irrelevant IMHO to what we as a society have control over going forward.

I agree about reasonable regulation. Government should have been stricter about regulating methane emissions for example. And I have no doubt the U.S. oil and gas industry has done some damage. But it pales compared to the benefits it's provided.

While obviously I believe the Trump administration made a stupid decision suspending the projects, it wasn't potentially as bad as Biden's suspension of drilling on federal leases. Offshore wind's never going to be a big contributor to U.S. energy unless government subsidizes the hell out of it. Fortunately in the end, Biden didn't get his way, and I don't think Trump will either.

[txdot-guy]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I don't agree at all. Please help me understand. Could you kindly elaborate. What has the oil and gas (not coal) industry broken? What damage has the industry done? What are examples where the industry hasn't cleaned up after itself? And how does the damage/breakage/clean up compare to the benefits we've realized from oil and gas production and consumption?

https://www.nationofchange.org/2024/...to-the-public/
The American oil industry’s playbook, illustrated: How drillers offload costly cleanup onto the public.

https://www.propublica.org/article/t...rys-slow-death
The Rising Cost of the Oil Industry’s Slow Death

Switching to a sustainable renewable energy system and reducing oil production is a net benefit when considering the impact oil production has on our environment. Putting up wind turbines seems like a better option than drilling holes in the ground and pumping in water and chemicals to push up oil and gas.

[Tiny]

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