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Equinor has filed a civil suit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against the order that suspended construction on five offshore wind projects, including its Empire Wind 1, which is now more than 60 per cent complete.
As part of the case, Empire Offshore Wind LLC, an Equinor subsidiary that filed the civil suit on 2 January, plans to seek a preliminary injunction to allow construction to continue while the litigation proceeds, the company said.
“While Empire continues to work closely with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the other relevant authorities to find a prompt resolution to the matter, the order is in Equinor’s view unlawful and threatens the progress of ongoing work with significant implications for the project. The preliminary injunction filing is necessary to allow the project to continue as planned during this critical period of execution and avoid additional commercial and financing impacts that are likely to occur should the order remain effective”, Equinor stated in a press release on 2 January.
With the legal action, Equinor joins Dominion Energy and the joint venture between Ørsted and Skyborn Renewables, which also filed lawsuits over the stop-work order that was issued by the US Department of the Interior (DOI) on 22 December and halted their projects that are at an advanced stage of construction, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) and Revolution Wind.
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The 810 MW Empire Wind 1 has a contract with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to deliver electricity for New York and is the first offshore wind farm to connect to New York City’s grid.
As the DOI said the order to pause construction was issued to allow for a review of “national security risks identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports” , Equinor noted that since it executed its lease for Empire Wind in 2017, the developer had coordinated closely with numerous federal officials on national security reviews, including with the Department of War, and that the company complied with relevant national security related requirements identified as part of the regulatory process.