The Department of the Interior said Monday that Duke Energy will voluntarily surrender its Carolina Long Bay offshore wind lease in exchange for redirecting roughly $129 million into new generation and grid investments across North Carolina and South Carolina. The settlement is the latest in a string of negotiated buyouts the Trump administration has used to wind down U.S. offshore wind leases without going through litigation or formal rescission.
Duke Energy Renewables Wind originally won the Carolina Long Bay lease at a 2022 Bureau of Ocean Energy Management auction with a bid of about $155 million, one of two areas offered off the Carolinas at the time. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the unwind as a way to convert what he called a national security concern into projects that lower costs, while Duke Carolinas chief executive Kodwo Ghartey-Tagoe said the reinvestment could fund new nuclear, natural gas generation and reliability upgrades.
The Duke deal follows a $765 million agreement announced earlier this month with Invenergy covering four leases in New York, California and the Gulf of Maine, plus prior settlements with TotalEnergies, Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind. Together the program has now redirected more than $2.5 billion in offshore wind lease capital toward natural gas, LNG, nuclear and grid infrastructure that the administration places under its Energy Dominance agenda.
The strategy is a sharp reversal from the Biden era, which ran six offshore wind sales generating about $5.6 billion in winning bids and opened new leasing areas on the Pacific Coast, Gulf of Mexico, Central Atlantic and Gulf of Maine. Several states have already challenged the buyout approach in federal court, arguing Interior lacks authority to unwind awarded leases through negotiation rather than established offshore leasing procedures.
For the maritime sector, each canceled lease shrinks the future pipeline of work for Jones Act compliant installation vessels, feeder barges, monopile fabricators and East Coast port upgrades that had been sized around a much larger U.S. offshore wind buildout. Owners and yards that staked capital on that demand now face a slower and smaller market, while LNG and gas focused infrastructure looks set to absorb the redirected investment instead.