June 2 (Reuters) - Seven U.S. states led by New York sued the Trump administration on Tuesday for cancelling a major offshore wind lease off the coast of New York.
The lawsuit in the Washington, D.C., federal court challenges a March 23 decision by the U.S. Department of the Interior to cancel a lease by a subsidiary of France's TotalEnergies, "reimburse" $795 million to the company, and extract a pledge from the company not to develop new offshore wind projects in the United States.
The agreement
represented a new strategy in the administration's wide-ranging effort to stop development of U.S. offshore wind projects, which President Donald Trump has said he finds ugly and expensive.
The suing states include New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.
"This pay-not-to-play scheme pressuring a foreign company to forego planned offshore wind projects in America in favor of gas and oil drilling is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars that hurts our ability to meet our energy needs, create good jobs, and help secure American energy independence while reducing emissions," New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement.
Officials from the Interior Department, Department of Justice and TotalEnergies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
