The Trump administration’s latest deal to cancel offshore wind projects and boost fossil fuel energy development instead is generating a huge payday for one of the president’s million-dollar donors.
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By Evan Halper, The Washington Post
The Trump administration’s latest deal to cancel offshore wind projects and boost fossil fuel energy development instead is generating a huge payday for one of the president’s million-dollar donors.
Behind the windfall is a settlement stipulating that German energy giant RWE will receive $1.2 billion from a federal fund on the condition that it gives up its offshore wind leases in New York, California and Louisiana and invests in unspecified oil, gas or nuclear “conventional energy” projects.
Most of the payout — $900 million — will be spent by RWE to buy a stake in a massive Louisiana liquefied natural gas project, according to statements from RWE and Woodside Energy, the majority owner of the gas project.
What hasn’t been previously reported is that the stake is being purchased from a private equity fund run by Australian billionaire Michael Dorrell, who owns a mansion on a private island near Mar-a-Lago and has boasted of socializing with President Donald Trump’s inner circle at the club. Dorrell personally gave $926,300 to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee two weeks after Trump was elected for a second term in late 2024 and another $73,700 a few weeks later, according to federal filings. (The Australia native also has U.S. citizenship.)
Administration officials said they had no involvement in the decision to select the Louisiana gas project or deploy settlement money in a way that benefits Dorrell’s firm, Stonepeak. “This story is a brazen attempt to insinuate a conflict-of-interest that does not exist,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said.
RWE said it made its plans independently, reflecting an assessment of what’s good for business and can be “advanced with certainty.”
But hearing of the link to Dorrell drew the ire of lawmakers who were already working to unwind the payouts to energy companies complicit in what they say is an illegal administration scheme to sink offshore wind.
“These fake ‘settlements’ were already an insane waste of taxpayer funds and a ridiculous charade that seems to be blatantly illegal,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (California), the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee. “This now adds the stench of corruption.”
Huffman said he will be expanding an ongoing probe to include use of settlement funds to benefit Dorrell’s company.
Dorrell declined to comment, as did Stonepeak, the firm where he is co-founder and CEO.
Dorrell, among the 10 richest Australians, has spoken previously about the perks of being a member of Trump’s private club in Florida and buying an 11-bedroom mansion nearby.
“It must be three wood from Mar-a-Lago,” he said during a panel at a business conference this year, invoking a golf drive’s distance.
About the club, he said: “It is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and I’ve taken a bunch of my friends there already. ... A lot of them are a little bit like ‘I don’t want to go and dah, dah, dah,’ and then they get there and they are like, holy smokes!”
“You’re sitting 15 meters from the president and it’s a cast of characters,” Dorrell said. “The president is truly revered in the U.S. So to be able to sit in the proximity of him at Mar-a-Lago, and then you hear like the Iran war was launched from Mar-a-Lago.”
The president has made eliminating offshore wind a priority, calling it “ugly” and a “scam.” After his administration’s plans to block wind leases ran into legal trouble — failing to convince courts that offshore wind development would interfere with military operations — Trump officials began cementing the payout deals, which now add up to nearly $4 billion and have voided a dozen offshore wind leases.
The payouts require developers to provide audits showing that their investments have met the administration’s expectations. But where to invest is not laid out in the deals.
“No one at the Department directed which company RWE was to invest in,” said a statement from the Department of Interior, which negotiated the settlement. “No one at the Department has been in contact with Stonepeak or its ownership. This administration will not sit back and let reckless projects create higher utility costs, a weakened energy system, and unnecessary harm to the environment.”
“These are voluntary agreements,” the statement said. “No one was forced to sign them. RWE came to the Department to initiate the conversation about this deal — not the other way around.”
The settlement agreement does not mention Stonepeak. It says the funds must be spent on “Conventional Energy Projects” defined as oil, gas or nuclear infrastructure.
RWE has said it concluded that there was “no path forward” for wind development in the United States.
“RWE determines where and how to deploy capital across its energy portfolio based on where it can deliver the greatest, most immediate value with a clear path to execution,” said an email from company spokeswoman Stephanie Cathcart.
In an earnings call this month, RWE CEO Markus Krebber said the company made “the LNG investments to fulfill the requirements of the settlement agreement with the U.S.”
Democrats in Congress have the companies agreeing to these settlements on notice that they ultimately could be forced to return the payouts to the Treasury. Several states are challenging the settlements in a federal lawsuit filed in June.
In the case of the RWE settlement, some experts questioned whether it was doing anything to advance the gas project, called Louisiana LNG. Stonepeak had already invested $5.7 billion. The $900 million from the settlement funds does not appear to infuse new money into the project, but rather enables Dorrell’s firm to reduce its exposure.
“The transaction between RWE and Stonepeak has no impact on Louisiana LNG, including its ownership structure, governance arrangements or development plans,” said a statement from the majority owner of the LNG project, the Australia-based firm Woodside Energy.
Ira Joseph, a gas markets scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said that the RWE investment appears to allow Stonepeak to offload part of its investment in what some in the industry see as a risky infrastructure project. “In terms of the pure volume of gas or energy that will be created, this does not add anything,” he said.
The project is seen as riskier than others because the developers have yet to line up contracts for most of the gas it would produce, as is traditionally done before a final investment decision is made on large LNG export terminals. At the same time, there is such a frenzy to build LNG terminals that market analysts are warning of a potential glut in the natural gas market by the time Louisiana LNG would come online, clouding the project’s financial viability.
“This is an outrageous use of $900 million of our tax dollars,” said Lukas Shankar-Ross, deputy director for climate and energy justice at the advocacy group Friends of the Earth. “Even by MAGA standards, this seems exceptionally dodgy.”
RWE officials said on this month’s earnings call that the Louisiana LNG investment is backed by “a long-term tolling agreement” that will begin “to contribute earnings from 2031 onwards.”
But Huffman and officials in several states suing to unravel the abandoned wind project settlements are determined to see that $900 million back in the Treasury.
“In writing and to their faces when I meet with these energy company CEOs, I am telling them, ‘You better tell your shareholders we are coming for that money,’” Huffman said. “I would not even cash the check.”
