Shell Walks Away From Major New Jersey Offshore Wind Farm (apnews.com) 57
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: In the first serious fallout from President Donald Trump's early actions against offshore wind power, oil and gas giant Shell is walking away from a major project off the coast of New Jersey. Shell told The Associated Press it is writing off the project, citing increased competition, delays and a changing market. "Naturally we also take regulatory context into consideration," spokesperson Natalie Gunnell said in an email.
Shell co-owns the large Atlantic Shores project, which has most of its permits and would generate enough power for 1 million homes if both of two phases were completed. That's enough for one-third of New Jersey households. It's unclear whether Shell's decision kills the project -- partner EDF-RE Offshore Development says it remains committed to Atlantic Shores. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order singling out offshore wind for contempt with a temporary halt on all lease sales in federal waters and a pause on approvals, permits and loans. Perhaps most of interest to Shell, the order directs administration officials to review existing offshore wind energy leases and identify any legal reasons to terminate them.
[...] The Biden administration approved plans to build the Atlantic Shores project in two phases in October, but construction has not begun. Oliver Metcalfe, head of wind research at BloombergNEF, said the partners are facing significant uncertainty about their lease, and other developers are watching what happens with Atlantic Shores closely. "We're in uncertain territory here," he added. [...] Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, said that without Shell's financial backing, it appears the project is "dead in the water." Shell is writing off a nearly $1 billion investment. It announced its decision on Thursday, as it reported a 16% decline in full-year earnings of $23.7 billion from $28.3 billion. Most of its business is oil and gas.
Shell co-owns the large Atlantic Shores project, which has most of its permits and would generate enough power for 1 million homes if both of two phases were completed. That's enough for one-third of New Jersey households. It's unclear whether Shell's decision kills the project -- partner EDF-RE Offshore Development says it remains committed to Atlantic Shores. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order singling out offshore wind for contempt with a temporary halt on all lease sales in federal waters and a pause on approvals, permits and loans. Perhaps most of interest to Shell, the order directs administration officials to review existing offshore wind energy leases and identify any legal reasons to terminate them.
[...] The Biden administration approved plans to build the Atlantic Shores project in two phases in October, but construction has not begun. Oliver Metcalfe, head of wind research at BloombergNEF, said the partners are facing significant uncertainty about their lease, and other developers are watching what happens with Atlantic Shores closely. "We're in uncertain territory here," he added. [...] Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, said that without Shell's financial backing, it appears the project is "dead in the water." Shell is writing off a nearly $1 billion investment. It announced its decision on Thursday, as it reported a 16% decline in full-year earnings of $23.7 billion from $28.3 billion. Most of its business is oil and gas.
They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is nobody wants to produce more oil and gas because they're making plenty of money what they're producing now. So there's not going to be any drill baby drill.
Your power bill is going up. Also your tax bill is probably going to double. You won't see it directly it'll be a national sales tax baked into every purchase you make. That money will be shifted into tax cuts for the billionaire buddies running the administration.
I would plan on having at least 10 to 15,000 less money next year. Just remember, if you voted for the occurrence administration you voted for this. Don't fuck it up again. There's a small chance you're going to have a opportunity to fix things in 2 and then 4 years.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Informative)
took half a billion dollars at least ... from big oil.
That's misleading. Big Oil spent half a billion during the election cycle but donated only 20% of that to Trump's campaign.
Big Oil is the biggest investor in wind. Shell ran this project. Even Exxon, the Sith Lord of the oil industry, is investing in wind. So, I'm skeptical that Big Oil is paying Trump to destroy its own investments.
it'll be a national sales tax
A national sales tax requires a constitutional amendment. It won't happen (although I'd be in favor -- consumption taxes are better than production taxes).
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Insightful)
Consumption taxes are effectively regressive. If you're making close enough to minimum wage, they're practically indistinguishable from a second layer of income tax. They're the worst type of taxes for most workers. If you're making far more money than you know what to do with or at least enough that you can avoid sales taxes in the jurisdiction where you make your money by spending a large fraction of your money elsewhere, they may not look so bad though.
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Not if there's a rebate. See: the long-dead Fair Tax.
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Prebate not rebate.
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Whether it's a prebate or rebate, it only mitigates the issue at the bottom end. It would still appear mostly regressive overall and would become increasingly negligible and avoidable through travel as your wealth increases.
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It would still appear mostly regressive overall
Payroll taxes (SS & Medicare) are even more regressive, and they disincentivize work rather than consumption.
So replace payroll taxes with a VAT, and everyone benefits.
Of course, the chance of this happening is 0%.
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And I don't see how "everyone" would benefit from a VAT. VAT is only applied when purchases are made. Somebody who makes $20k/year and spends $20k total would pay a certain VAT. Somebody who makes $2M/year and also spends $20k total and saves the rest would pa
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Not if there's a rebate. See: the long-dead Fair Tax.
Problem is, anytime you try to make a regressive tax into a progressive one, you just end up with more bureaucracy than just using a progressive income taxation scheme in the first place. The reason is quite simple: Any sort of means testing to see who is entitled to a refund or rebate or however you try to make your tax scheme more fair for lower income earners, is going to require some form of income reporting. You might as well just tax the income and be done with it.
Also, there's what I hilariously l
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No you don't wind up with more bureaucracy. The IRS is incredibly labor-intensive. It has to tax (and potentially audit) every income earner in the United States. A consumption tax only has to audit businesses that sell products/services subject to taxation. I live in a sales tax state, and as a sales tax payer, I can personally attest to how much easier it is for me to pay sales tax than it is for me to pay Federal income tax to the IRS. I fill out zero forms every year.
Now you might argue that a preb
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The beauty of a prebate is that you don't need to means test it (I don't think fair tax had means testing for example).
Everyone gets it, you just set the prebate level at a point where it (more than) completely offsets what level you want to be protected from regressive tax.
I'd think setting it at average consumption allowing the majority to actually get more back than it costs them.
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No, you prebate everyone at average consumption, so the majority of people are actually getting a slight bonus (average is higher than median).
You don't need to see who gets it, everyone does (there's room to debate who "everyone" is, but generally adult permanent residents living in the country would be a starting point).
It also lays out a framework for a UBI of that's the type of thing you're into, since as the economy can afford it you can increase the prebate levels (in a perfect world I'd think UBI sho
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Consumption taxes are effectively regressive.
It depends on the product being taxed. Is the product type something that poor people tend to buy? Or is it a luxury item that mostly rich people buy?
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm skeptical that Big Oil is paying Trump to destroy its own investments.
Those aren't investments, those are hedges. These are oil companies, oil is far more profitable than wind (or almost anything else), and these companies would like to continue to pump out oil and sell it forever. But they know that can't happen, so they hedge.
It looks like that hedge might be superfluous now, at least for the near future, so they're dropping it.
They need to buy time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Interesting)
The reality is we COULD get off the oil tit if we (as a species) wanted to.. but no one wants to because its been turned into a ideological/political issue instead of one that should be about quality of life and survival. Even the Saudi Government (one of the major producers of oil) understand, it won't last forever, so they are investing in a number of other schemes and plans to make oil just a tiny part (of their overall financial portfolio).. Real estate, Technology, education, strategic partnerships with various countries, trade relations, etc... all elements that were bought into by oil money, but should survive post oil.
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It's showing up the fundamental flaw in late stage capitalism. That wind far will be profitable, just not quite as profitable as selling more oil. So someone should build it, someone looking to take a slice of the oil companies' cake.
But they can't, because it needs a lot of capital to build. Investors won't put the money on if they can make more with oil, and if the politicians that the oil companies bought are going to block it anyway.
The market has failed to optimize and deliver a better solution. Capita
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The second is the largest barrier right now. Not a single state has tight enough regulations on solar installers that any sane person is going to let them near the roof they rely on to keep their family
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Informative)
A national sales tax requires a constitutional amendment. It won't happen
Widespread tariffs are a good approximation of a national sales tax. Prices going up on almost everything, with the government collecting taxes. Might as well be a sales tax.
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So, I'm skeptical that Big Oil is paying Trump to destroy its own investments.
Elon Musk has entered the chat. He spent how much money to get a man elected who wants to nuke the EV subsidies?
Either these rich folks are on some 3D chess thing that is beyond the comprehension to us mere mortals, or they're just so absurdly wealthy that they truly don't care if they flush some of their investments down the toilet. Kinda like the stereotype of the eccentric tycoon who just had his house redecorated and then wakes up the next morning and decides he absolutely hates everything and it all
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Either these rich folks are on some 3D chess thing
Musk said that in ten years, Tesla will make way more money selling robots than cars.
Say I believe what you say (Score:1)
And no a national sales tax does not require an act of Congress. You just have to keep jacking up tariffs. Which the president can do unilaterally because Congress already gave him the ability to do that. Mix in some deep deep deep spending cuts that will devastate your community and Trump can easily get the money together to give his billionaire buddies a trillion dollars of your money every year.
Once again, look at what you pa
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it'll be a national sales tax
A national sales tax requires a constitutional amendment. It won't happen (although I'd be in favor -- consumption taxes are better than production taxes).
It's not clear that a sales tax is regarded as a direct tax that would be subject to the apportionment rule. Past Supreme Court rulings support the idea that a sales tax would be an indirect tax that is not subject to the apportionment rule and therefore would be already legal under the Taxing and Spending Clause. Of course, that's assuming that stare decisis still exists, which is increasingly not true with the current Supreme Court.
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I'm sure changing the birthright citizenship should also require a constitutional amendment but here we are. If no one in any kind of power is willing to tell Trump "No, you can't do that." then what does it really require for him to do literally anything?
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A national sales tax requires a constitutional amendment. It won't happen (although I'd be in favor -- consumption taxes are better than production taxes).
An actual sales tax would require a constitutional amendment, perhaps. But I don't think that's what the OP was saying. If you drive up the cost of energy, it has a similar economic effect to a national sales tax. The same if you put tariffs on just about everything. You're right it's not strictly a sales tax especially since it's based on cost, not final sales price, but a sales tax is still a good analogy for those who aren't very familiar with these things.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump has a personal beef with wind power. That's why he's so obsessed with it and keeps telling lies to sway people about it. Basically they were trying to build a wind farm off the coast near his Scottish golf course (the one that nobody wanted). Trump tried to sue, and lost. Since then we've seen him obsess about it.
He claims to be an expert on windmills, despite still calling them "windmills" :-) He's claimed that the noise causes cancer, that it ruins the environment, that it's the most expensive form of electricity generation, and that if the wind stops that electricity stops (he's never heard of mixing electricity sources on the same grid), and that it killed so many migratory builds (never mind that his administration later made a rule that it was ok to kill migratory birds as long as you didn't mean to).
But none of that is why he originally opposed the wind farm, he opposed it merely because it looked ugly.
Yes, Trump likes to obsess, and he likes to hold a grudge. All fine qualities in a political leader.
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Don Quixote also tilted at windmills
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Don Quixote also tilted at windmills
The idiom means to fight battles against something incorrectly perceived as a threat, and it is rather ironic that this is something Trump does both figuratively and literally.
Problem is, it works. If you manage to convince enough people that the windmills really are giants intent on destroying your way of life if you let them, some of them might actually start to believe it.
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If you can get people to believe absurdities you can get them to commit atrocities - Voltaire (more or less)
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Don Quixote may have had some mental illness but he still had good intent. That's the main difference.
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I've always thought wind farms and solar panels look pretty cool and futuristic.
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Trump doesn't hold a grudge because he can't think straight en
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While I personally think they have a super cool futuristic look most people hate them. And rich people especially hate having them offshore because they think it's spoils their view.
12km is the farthest you can see over the ocean, anything further is below the curvature of the Earth.
14km is how far out the Atlantic shores project is located.
No one on land has or even could see it.
This excuse is no different than some stupid rich dick saying the flag planted at the north pole is ruining their view too
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It's a good idea to have emergency savings *every* year. But things won't move quite that quickly. So far Trump has made a lot of noise, and back off of half the things he tried to do. He did succeed in renaming the Gulf of Mexico, but so far not a whole lot else.
The Shell project was no doubt already in trouble. Shell is just using Trump as an excuse to walk away, it's called CYA with shareholders.
And Democrats are just as bad about spending money they don't have, as Republicans. The more the two sides yel
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Insightful)
Equating Democrats and Republicans is laughable at this point. You can shut up now.
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You do have a point.
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And somehow the false equivalence of "they're both equally bad" always seems to be coupled to "so I voted for the face eating leopards".
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iI thought wind was cheaper than the other options, so why do wind farm projects need federal money to move forward?
If we're going to pretend it something the new administration did (in its first week!) that caused Shell to write-off millions in investments, perhaps Shell wasn't really interested in the project?
Biden signed off on the plan in October, and Shell dropped it 4 months later, citing "delays", "competition" and a changing market.... perhaps when they realized they weren't going to get free money
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There's a very large cost difference between onshore and offshore wind projects. Electricity from offshore windmills can be anywhere from double to five times the cost of electricity from onshore windmills.
Re:They didn't walk away from it (Score:4, Insightful)
While I don't know the specifics of this project, people here seem to miss some context. Royal Dutch Shell was an anglo-Dutch company that was very involved in wind projects globally. During 2022 they moved officially to the UK, renamed to 'Shell' and in early 2023 the Dutch CEO was shitcanned and a new arab CEO was appointed - Wael Sawan. He wasted no time immediately starting to cut back on any green projects. You can find the employee calls to not do it in 2023: https://www.reuters.com/sustai... [reuters.com]
Since then one after the other renewable energy project was scrapped. Big companies are like oil tankers, it takes a while to change direction. So we are still seeing these announcements left and right of shell cancelling some project. Here about cutting the unit in May: https://www.power-technology.c... [power-technology.com]
While I'm sure that like many other companies the Trump election was the queue to take the mask off completely and quit any pretenses of loving earth or humans immediately, this was all part of a process already set in motion a while ago.
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There are allegations that offshore wind turbines are producing infrasound that may harm whales and other wildlife.
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Indeed. In addition to the project already being in trouble, it's called CYA for investors, who will now think it's logical to walk away.
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"I understand that people are sayin this Okian Warrior fellow is a nasty, nasty terrible person who nobody, but nobody, should believe, believe you me... why just the other day, one of my supporters, one of my greatest supporter, came to me with tears in his eyes, a great huge tower of a man, reduced to tears, mind you, by the very terrible horrendous, nasty, nasty things that this Okian Warrior has been saying, that people are all talking about, just nasty, I tell you nasty..."
We are so screwed (Score:2)
We are so screwed.
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Well that depends on screwer or screwew, but I agree we are totally fouked either way.
JoshK.
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Then Wael Sawan... (Score:2)
Then Wael Sawan will say he got trumped and "wants his life back." And then cry with $10-million in salary to the bank. Oils well that ends well...
JoshK.
I like to blame Trump too but... (Score:2)
I love a good Trump bash, but this has nothing to do with Trump or even the USA government. For over a year there have been massive pressures placed on oil companies who were pushing a green agenda (most predominantly Shell and bp), not by governments, but by shareholders. Shell and bp were both massively trailing major oil company rivals in the stock market and investors were looking for blood. So blood they got.
- Both Shell and bp recently replaced their CEOs, Shell end of 2022, bp end of 2023.
- Shell bai
Trump's Rage and Revenge Comeback Tour (Score:3)
Anyone who says this is OK chooses the blue pill. Those who think they are immune to real world results will be blindsided. The police and firefighters in New York are already finding that out because Trump wants to end funding for 9/11 first responders after they endorsed him. The energy companies who made rational plans including renewables and supported Republicans in any way are in the same situation.
Not only is the economy going to take a nose dive, day to day existence will massively be degraded. Big chunks of the government will be shut down with no planning. The ripple effects will be enormous, and if combined with dumb-ass tariffs will break large segments of American life. Things will become radically dysfunctional sooner rather then later.
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