The day after a big offshore wind project returned from the dead, all anyone in New York wanted to talk about was gas.
President Donald Trump’s sudden decision Monday to reverse course and lift a stop work order on Empire Wind 1 prompted widespread speculation in Albany and Washington that the president had extracted a commitment from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to allow a new gas pipeline to move forward. The governor, a Democrat, insisted no such deal was made, even as her aides noted Hochul was not opposed to a new pipeline — provided it meet all the necessary permitting requirements.
Those statements did little to temper speculation among both supporters and detractors of offshore wind. At the state capitol in Albany, state Sen. Pat Fahy, a Democrat who has championed wind, said she was “thrilled” to learn Monday evening that work on Empire Wind was resuming. But after hearing the news, her thoughts quickly went to gas.
“I’m still trying to get the details on what the trades were here. Evidently, there’s something about the natural gas pipelines,” Fahy said. “So we don’t know what it means.”
Permitting a pipeline, she noted, has been “very controversial in this state.”
On the other end of the spectrum, offshore wind opponents reacted with dismay. Many were heartened by Trump’s rhetoric last fall on the campaign trail, where he railed against wind turbines as expensive whale killers — as well as his early moves to halt permitting of new projects through executive order.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued a stop work order to Empire Wind on April 16 to cheers from Republican lawmakers, conservative activists and offshore wind critics who said the project would mar the ocean and drive up electric bills. The $5 billion project being built by Equinor, the Norwegian oil company, had begun placing rock scour on the ocean floor in March in advance of foundation installation.
In a post on X, the conservative activist and wind critic Steve Milloy wrote that he “didn’t understand” the decision to lift the pause, noting that a pipeline through New York “is nowhere close to even being completed or surviving litigation.”
“If there’s more to the deal, let’s hear it,” he added.
The Trump administration, for its part, was uncharacteristically mum. Neither the White House nor Interior Department responded to requests for comment. Burgum said he was “encouraged” by Hochul’s “willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity” in a post on X late Monday that did not mention Empire Wind.
Even so, there was evidence that work was resuming on the 54-turbine project.
Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management posted a letter to Equinor on its website announcing the pause had been lifted. A labor official said workers had returned to work on a marine terminal in Brooklyn where the project will be staged. An Equinor official said the company was remobilizing vessels that were idled during the pause, and it planned to move forward with rock scouring and foundation installation during the summer construction season.
“We don’t realize how close the offshore wind industry was to collapsing,” said Esther Rosario, executive director of Climate Jobs NY. Rosario said she was thankful Hochul and Trump “saw eye-to-eye on this and we’re able to put union members back to work.”
Bonnie Brady, a wind critic who leads the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, said her heart sank when she learned the news.
“We need to be able to speak with the president because he has been given bad information,” she said. “I know he doesn’t want to be the guy that destroyed an industry on his watch.”
A new gas pipeline likely would face years of lawsuits from environmental groups. Even so, she argued New York should not be forced to choose between a “gas pipeline or eating fresh, local, sustainable seafood.”
Pipeline politics
Pipelines and offshore wind have been the center of New York’s politics for much of the last decade. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, blocked two pipeline proposals as he made offshore wind a centerpiece of New York’s climate and energy strategy. Those moves enraged conservatives, who argued New York would pay more for energy by blocking natural gas and relying on a renewable industry to meet its energy needs.
There has been speculation that pipeline developers may resurrect the plans previously rejected by Cuomo, who shot down a pair of pipeline proposals from Williams Cos. in 2016 and 2020.
The 125-mile Constitution pipeline would have carried gas from Pennsylvania to Wright, New York. New York rejected a Clean Water Act permit for the project, saying it would damage trout streams and old-growth forests. The state also blocked a plan to expand the Transco gas pipeline system’s capacity by an additional 400 million cubic feet a day, saying it was inconsistent with New York’s 2019 climate law.
Since returning to office, Trump has talked up the possibility of reviving pipeline projects in the Northeast while taking aim at the wind industry. An executive order issued on his first day back in the White House paused permits for new wind projects on federal lands and ordered regulators to review existing one.
Northeastern Democrats, too, have signaled new openness to pipelines after watching energy costs rise and amid persistent delays in bringing online new offshore wind facilities.
A Hochul aide said the governor had not explicitly agreed to permit a new pipeline during three one-hour conversations with the president concerning Empire Wind over the weekend.
Hochul emphasized to Trump that the wind project was already under construction. Canceling it, she told the president, would shake investor confidence in the U.S., lead to a loss of work for union members from Trump-supporting regions of Long Island and set back New York’s energy plans, which assumed the project would come online to help meet rising energy demand.
At the same time, the aide said the governor reiterated her previous position on pipelines. The governor said she would support a project that can demonstrate it fulfills a need and satisfies the state’s environmental permitting requirements.
