The Truth about Wind Farms – With Meghan Lapp
Meghan Lapp has been at the forefront of the Wind Farm Turbulence and issues on the East Coast, and she was just on the Ingram Angle discussing the problems with the offshore wind farms. You won’t want to miss this opportunity to ask David Blackmon, Tammy Nemeth, Irina Slav, Stu Turley, and our special guest, Meghan Lapp, about the problems being kept from the public. Some real safety issues are not being covered.
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the hidden impacts of offshore wind projects from threats to marine life and fisheries, to navigation risks, radar interference, and even national security concerns. Meghan shares first-hand insight into how these projects are reshaping the East Coast and why the public deserves to know more.
Great job, Meghan! She is a national treasure and has been tirelessly working to protect our fishing and offshore industries from the overreach of our prior adminstration’s horrific implementation.
Highlights of the Podcast
00:01 – Introduction
03:39 – Status of Offshore Wind Projects
09:59 – Legal Oversight & Environmental Concerns
15:59 – Marine Life & Migration Routes
20:25 – National Security Issues
25:02 – Wildlife “Take” Permits
29:21 – Oil & Gas vs. Wind Development
35:56 – Europe’s Offshore Wind Experience
42:53 – U.S. Navy Concerns
46:51 – Financial Struggles of Orsted
49:00 – Next Steps
52:36 – UPDATED: Carney unveils first wave of national infrastructure: Still no pipeline
53:22 – Lion Electric school buses cleared to gradually return after fire scare, company says
54:40 – Key agency sticks to its guns on peak oil demand
55:29 – Short-Term Energy Outlook
56:22 – Orsted to sell shares at 67% discount in $9.4 billion rights issue
58:09 – US urges EU to ditch Russian oil and gas faster
59:12 – OPEC still sees tight oil market despite supply increases
The Truth about Wind Farms – With Meghan Lapp
Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.
David Blackmon [00:00:11] Well, good morning everyone. And welcome to the energy realities podcast. Our regular monthly, monthly, weekly, Monday morning show. Gosh, man, it’s, it it’s early. I’m sorry. I haven’t had my third cup of coffee yet here with us today. Our Irina Slav in Bulgaria. How are you today?
Irina Slav [00:00:32] I’m great. Thank you, David.
David Blackmon [00:00:34] Well, it’s good to see is the weather good. Is it still hot or is, I mean, it has been hot as hell.
Irina Slav [00:00:38] No, we’re moving slowly but inexorably to autumn, so the weather is changing for the better.
David Blackmon [00:00:46] Good. Climate change is happening in Bulgaria. Tammy, you are in the UK today.
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:55] Yeah, UK today.
David Blackmon [00:00:57] U.K. Today. How are things?
Tammy Nemeth [00:00:59] Hey, it’s been rainy for the past a little while. So that’s great. It’s been a very dry summer. So end of summer being wet is a good thing. Yay, weather.
David Blackmon [00:01:11] The farmers will be happy, I hope.
Tammy Nemeth [00:01:13] Yeah, for sure.
David Blackmon [00:01:15] And Stuart Turley is in,
Stuart Turley [00:01:22] And the sun is just now coming out across the lake, so life is good.
David Blackmon [00:01:27] Well, man, it’s good to see you healthy and happy. And our special guest today, we’re gonna talk about the truth about wind farms with one of the greatest spokespersons I’ve ever known in my life who is, she’s with Seafreeze Limited. She has been one of great leaders against the offshore wind atrocity happening in the Northeast Atlantic over the past several years. Meghan Lapp, how are you today?
Meghan Lapp [00:01:57] I am excellent. Thank you for having me.
David Blackmon [00:01:59] And you are, where are you today? Tell everybody where you are.
Meghan Lapp [00:02:02] I am on Fire Island.
David Blackmon [00:02:05] Fire island.
Meghan Lapp [00:02:06] Barrier Island about 65 miles long south of Long Island in New York.
David Blackmon [00:02:12] That’s a real, that’s a big time island. Gosh, that is as big as the barrier islands we have here in Texas. Uh, well, it’s great for you to join us. I know you’re on vacation and I really appreciate you taking the time. This is such a hot issue and, uh, it has been one of the real focus areas for the Trump administration since January, President Trump throughout the campaign last year made clear his intentions to stop. Wind development in the Northeast Atlantic and anywhere else in the United States. And his administration has taken an array of actions so far that have either halted or delayed or otherwise inhibited a great number of the largest wind projects in the federal waters of the Northeastern Atlantic. And we wanted to have you on today to talk about. How those projects, some of which are partially built a couple of which are almost completed. And one of which that had the infamous blade collapse last year that polluted Nantucket Island, uh, has been in operation, uh you know, and continues to be developed. So talk about the status of where things stand and, and how the. These things have negatively impacted the marine fisheries and what the concerns are for the fishermen you represent.
Meghan Lapp [00:03:39] Sure well thanks um well i’ll kind of go down the coast because we have several projects that are under construction um some of them that have been addressed by the trump administration others not yet um hopefully they will be but you know on day one the trump ministration said um trump issued an executive order and he said we’re not going to issue any more permits right so that meant from Maine to… Like South Carolina, there were over 25 leases already issued, right? So there are many projects, many leases, because sometimes the leases are broken up into multiple projects. These are very, very large leases. So, but the Biden administration approved 11 projects. One of them, he finished approving on like, January 17th, and right before. Um, so some of those have been under construction, some of them, you know, nothing’s, nothing’s happened. Um, some them have lawsuits and on July 29th, um, the secretary of interior, um the secretary interior issued a secretarial order saying, we’re going to review all these projects. And the ones specifically that have lawsuits, we’re going to really look at them to see where they legally, you know issued in the first place. So what you’ve seen is, um. The Maryland project. Which is, you know, that one’s not built or anything, but they’ve remanded that and said they’re gonna vacate the approval of the construction plan, right? So, but if you work north to south, you have Vineyard Wind, the one with the blade break that is under construction. That one is still not operational because what happened was when the blade broke, they had to do like an investigation. They said, oh, a lot of the blades just didn’t have enough bonding on them. So they were told that they were going to have to take the blades down off of 22 turbines. So that’s 66 blades, right? They’re going to put them on a boat, ship them to France. Then they’re going have to fix them. Then they have to bring them back. So they’re like in the middle of that. If you see the Spanish utility Iberdrola, which owns Avangrid, which is like a 50% owner of that project, they’ll come out and say, oh, there’s 17 turbines producing power or whatever. Maura Healey, who is the governor. Of Massachusetts, she’ll say, oh, there’s like 12 of them producing power or something along those lines. However, a friend of mine actually asked the energy information agency, they were like, you know, what’s the plant number of this project? And is it producing power? And they said no. So I kind of think that that is probably the case.
David Blackmon [00:06:16] So there’s been a lot of bad media reports around that project, obviously.
Meghan Lapp [00:06:20] Right, so then you move south of that is New England wind one and two which are Commonwealth wind and Park City wind two more projects that has a lawsuit and the DOJ just said hey We want to remand The approval of that construction plan. So that just happened about a week ago They announced that you move on a little bit south you have revolution wind which is approved in about 80% way through construction At the beginning of September, the Trump administration said, we want to stop work order on it. And we’re going to look at it to see if it was properly permitted. That also has a lawsuit. South of that is South Fork Wind Farm. That’s like a smaller project, about like 12 turbines. That is already built. South of that is sunrise wind.
David Blackmon [00:07:11] Now is South Fork in federal waters or is it in state waters? It’s in federal water.
Meghan Lapp [00:07:17] Yep, that one has a cable that runs to New York. I don’t know if it’s really producing power. Directly south of that is Sunrise Wind, which is that one now, the owner of Revolution, which Orsted also owns Sunrise Wind. So when they got the stop work order on Revolution, they’ve now taken all their boats and they’re going great guns on Sunrise to try to see what they can do before. You know, kind of the hammer probably falls on that as well. Oh, and there was South Coast wind off of Massachusetts as well, that one has a lawsuit. They said they’re going to revamp that as well. Then you keep going. Then you get to actually where I am, which is Empire Wind. Empire Wind is like this triangular shaped project right between the New York traffic lanes on the way into Harbor. It’s like the worst place you can possibly put them. Anyways, that originally the Trump administration issued a stop work order in like April. And then in May lifted it after supposedly there was a pipeline deal done for like the Constitution pipeline, because New York always used to cancel that pipeline when they tried to get it through, right? So that one, I’ll be very honest, I’m very upset about. I can go down to the beach here. I can walk down to beach and I can see the construction vessels and they are pile driving away. And it’s a really terrible place to put it. Especially considering all of the traffic that’s here the marine traffic and they put it in between shipping lanes, which is like really stupid there used to be a Navigational tower called at first was called Ambrose lightship It was like a ship with a lighthouse on it. Essentially. It was a floating lighthouse, right and To mark the entrance to New York Harbor Then it became a tower. They called it Ambrosa tower Then they had to take that away because so many ships hit it So now I’m like so you’re gonna put all the turbines Anyway, so that’s that one. You move further down, tons more leases, nothing going on with them. And then the Maryland project, they are going to remand with the intent to vacate the construction plan. That I believe they actually did announce. DOJ made a motion to do that, I believe, like last week. And then you go further down and Dominion Wind off of Virginia is under construction. I think they have all the bases in. I think that the stumps. Um or most of them but not the actual turbines um so that one has not received any you know um interior attention that i’m aware of yet but.
David Blackmon [00:09:50] No, yeah. Yeah
Meghan Lapp [00:09:51] Right and I think probably my guess is that they will go down the list on these things. I’m hoping
David Blackmon [00:09:59] Oh, I think clearly that’s the intention. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think they’re in any way done yet. Yeah. So, and of course the big problem was what, what is the, the focal point of what interior is objecting to is that so many corners were cut, so many requirements under the law for these permits were just ignored by the department of interior and these regulatory agencies during the Biden administration. To rush these projects into approval without properly considering impacts to endangered species, marine mammals, the fishing industry, because they knew these things were gonna have enormous impacts to all of these things and more. And so they felt the need because they weren’t sure that Biden was even up to running again, which it turned out he wasn’t, or even if he did, if he could win reelection, they wanted to rush as much of this stuff into permitting approval as possible. Before the election and before the changeover in administrations after Kamala Harris lost. And so, you know, these requirements are there for a reason. These are protections of endangered species and the environment and the rights of the fishing industry and other industries that use these federal waters, the shipping industries that come in and out of these harbors. And so it’s just this incredibly rich playground now for this administration to come in and say, no, we’re not going to keep moving down that road and we’re going to implement these stop work orders and we are going to do proper environmental reviews. And when they do that, they’re going find all sorts of reasons to legitimately halt construction on these things. And so yeah, so but but talk about Negative impacts on, since you’re a spokesperson for the marine fisheries industry, talk about how these projects negatively impact the ability for people in your industry to get their jobs done.
Meghan Lapp [00:12:06] Yeah, that’s a really a really broad subject, but it’s kind of I can I can.
David Blackmon [00:12:12] Just at a high low.
Meghan Lapp [00:12:15] Compartmentalize it into like three top things. Number one, operations. Number two, navigation. Number three, species impacts. So my vessels and a lot of vessels that operate on the East Coast are mobile. Gear vessels. That means we tow a net, or some people tow a dredge, you know, behind the vessel to harvest the species that we’re targeting. And you can’t fish like that in a wind farm. And these companies, if you go to the UK, or you go to Europe, they will have notices to fishermen that will say, do not fish in here with trawl gear or mobile gear, because to do so can, quote, cause serious risk of loss of life. Then those same companies came to the U.S. And said, It’s okay. Everything is fine. You can go in there. You’ll be fine. So that is, you know, and I raised that in all of my comments. I was like, so in Europe, they say you could die, but here they tell you no, no, everything is. Fine. That’s that’s number one. You know, so you can’t you can’t fish in there? The other thing is, even if you could, it wouldn’t be safe because wind turbines cause radar interference. So marine radar interference, You know, when we’re fishing, we fish. All days of the year, all kinds of weather at night, inclement weather, rain, fog, blizzards, whatever, and you need radar. You need it to be able to see and to be to safely navigate. And these interfere with that. So you’re not even gonna be able to safely transit through. And I’ve also spoken to fishermen, like most fishermen are like, we’re not trying to go through there. We’re not, we’re even going near it. We will spend the extra hours to go around. Like these boats are not fast. Like fishing boats, you know what I mean? Like you go like 10 miles an hour. You know what mean? Like that’s like your top speed. So to go around, it’s a long time because a lot of these projects are very large. And, but fishermen are like, we’re not even going through there because if anything God forbid were to go wrong, like if you lost steerage, you lost power, anything, you know, you caught a rope in your propeller, right? You’re gonna just slam up against these things and nobody wants that. But then there’s the radar interference on top of it. But I knew one guy who was like, He was He was trying to get home and he decided he was going to try to go through where the Revolution Wind Farm is, which it’s not all the way built, you know what I mean, but he was gonna try to go there. And he experienced electronic interference when he went through there. So like it’s happening. And then the other thing is, you Know, constructing an industrial power plant on of, you know, habitat grounds for species isn’t great. You know, Manhattan used to be awesome, used to very beautiful. There used to a lot of animals, a lot wildlife, a lot trees and meadows and woods and things there. And now there’s not. You know? Once you construct, that’s a problem. And you know, the pile driving from these things, the cable laying, the surveying killed a lot stuff. And then, you know it was just years and years of seismic essentially, low grade seismic, but seismic nonetheless. And then once they are operational, they emit low frequency noise and a lot of electromagnetic fields. And, you know, fish and marine species use the earth’s geomagnetic field to navigate and to migrate. That’s what they use. So when you start introducing something that’s a fake one, that messes them up. And I know fishermen that have told me it certainly has happened with the Block Island Project, which is only five turbines, and they’re not nearly as big as the ones they’re going in now. But fishermen I know that used to set their net. Near the cable route, they don’t set anything there anymore. They said the fish won’t cross the cable. They’ve had to completely change where they fish because the fish felt that and were like, eh, no.
David Blackmon [00:15:59] Yeah. That’s, that’s one of the most objectable aspects to all of this is they intentionally the administration, the Biden administration, intentionally approved, citing these projects, these industrial, massive, huge, enormous industrial projects with towers as tall as 1100 feet. The empire state buildings about that tall, uh, right in the middle of known migration routes for whales and other marine mammal species. It’s just the most. I mean, it’s just really an ecological atrocity intentionally committed by this left wing administration that supposedly was concerned about endangered species. Tammy, you brought to our attention this morning something similar that’s happening in Canada, right?
Tammy Nemeth [00:16:45] Yeah, but before we go into that, I think Irina has a question.
Irina Slav [00:16:49] I do have a question.
David Blackmon [00:16:50] All right, I’m sorry. Sorry.
Tammy Nemeth [00:16:52] It’s okay.
David Blackmon [00:16:53] I told you all this would be rough with me moderating.
Irina Slav [00:16:56] That’s fine, David. Come on. Isn’t what you’re saying about the impact on marine life and on the fishing industry enough of a grounds to suspend this construction? Legally speaking, I have no idea about the legal framework of it all, but it sounds like a very good reason for me to, you know, put an end to this. It’s interfering with the environment, with the marine. Live and with the fishing industry. It’s not a small industry. I assume after all it’s not the niche industry
Meghan Lapp [00:17:34] Yeah, I believe that it is. If you look at what’s very interesting is that the law that authorizes offshore wind leasing and development in the U.S. Is the same law that authorizes offshore oil and gas development. However, the sections of the law that apply to each one of those sectors is very, very, different. Um, the language that applies to offshore wind leasing and development is much, much stronger and it requires that the secretary, it says the secretary shall ensure that any activity, whether it’s citing leasing, development, you know, approval of the projects, whatever any activity carried out under the offshore wind section, the secretary’s shall ensure a host of criteria. One of those is prevention of interference. With reasonable uses of the ocean. So obviously federally permitted and regulated commercial fishing is a reasonable use of the oceans. And they were supposed to prevent interference at every level, right? And they never did that. They were like, eh, you know, like they knew that fishing took place there. They knew that there would be impacts. And they’re like, ah, it’s okay, you now. And then one of the other things is protection of the environment. You know, so to your, point about, you know, marine species and, David, your point about whales. I mean, like, there’s like multiple, like endangered species that use this area as a migratory corridor. Like, I don’t think any other industry would be allowed to to do this. And like I said, the language is so much stronger for the requirements on offshore wind development than oil and gas development. And you look at, you the requirements for oil and gas development, which are stricter. I think that there are very good legal grounds to rescind all of them. I think you could rescind all the leases because none of them were issued legally in the first place. So that’s where obviously I hope that they go.
David Blackmon [00:19:32] I think that’s where they’re heading. That’s where they’re headed. That is where they want to go.
Irina Slav [00:19:36] Good to know. Thank you.
Stuart Turley [00:19:43] I’ve talked to some military folks and they do not, when farms cause problems with radar period. Yep. It is a fact. And so these things, you could sneak a boat, you can sneak airplanes. These are a national security problem and I don’t understand how they even got permitted in the first place. But I know that that has to be addressed.
David Blackmon [00:20:12] Well, at the Pentagon is going to get involved in that. I think they’re just setting the, getting the groundwork in place before they intercede that I don’t think there’s any doubt the Pentagon will be also taking action here.
Meghan Lapp [00:20:25] Yeah, no, for sure. Actually, the project that they’re constructing just out here right now, um, there was an analysis done by Boehm back during the first Trump administration at the very end of it that showed that the radar interference caused by this project would interfere with multiple, um, air surveillance radars in New York. And that, and they just came out and said, they were like, yeah, planes and targets could hide over the wind farm. It’ll, it’ll be a huge issue. The nearly the entire line of sight of JFK Airport’s terminal radar would be interfered with. And I don’t know if you’ll see it behind me here, but like there is there’s just like the traffic lane right into JFK over here. There’s just constant planes and there’s constant like small planes too. You know, like the little ones, the little private aircraft, as well as the big, you know, jetliners. And it’s a constant parade of traffic. And I’m like, They’re going right over. This whole thing. And, you know, we just remembered September 11th. You know, I’m kind of like, it was those radars that they were looking for planes with.
Stuart Turley [00:21:30] The other piece of the thing, Meghan, that has really been a proven issue is the technology that has been put into from China’s wind turbines. Even though Orsted has really got some things, China has made a lot of the Orsted equipment and we’ve got to go through and see which ones are there. They can take down. Once those things get attached. They can remotely take apart different parts of the grid. And so this is a remote problem because now these things are out in the ocean. You pull a boat up to it, you attach to it and it’s got back doors into the entire system. This is so poorly thought out. Did I say that correctly?
Meghan Lapp [00:22:18] Oh, go ahead.
Stuart Turley [00:22:19] Did I say that correctly.
Meghan Lapp [00:22:21] Yeah. Yeah. There’s actually a federal register notice out. I think the public comment period ends September 30th and it’s on that topic. They, the federal government is looking for, for, you know, feedback on, you know what are the national security issues with the components? Exactly. To your, to your points too. And the other thing, one thing that continually like boggles my mind is that, okay, it’s not New London and what do you call it? Groton, Connecticut. It is the world’s largest submarine base. It’s where we house our submarines. We build them there. There’s an electric boat there that builds them. This is where they refurbish them, they do all kinds of stuff, they change out the reactors, all this. And to go into the Groton sub-base, Or like the actual facility where they do this stuff. You actually have to be a natural born US citizen. You could not be a naturalized citizen like Melania Trump could not go into the building. Okay. So this is how tight the security is. Meanwhile, right across the river is the state pier in New London, Connecticut. And that is where Orsted is staging all of their turbines from that they’re building revolution wind farm with. And I’m like, I kind of feel like. That’s probably not a great idea, you know, and you have these boats, the boats that are building stuff. I mean, you know, they’re flagged with like Panama, right? Yes. Panama, um, Cyprus, you know, all these kind of random countries and you know they’re not they’re they’re crude with like Malaysians. So and you don’t know who’s on that boat and you don’t what’s going on and we’re gonna allow like the Have a great day. For picking up equipment and dropping off equipment and everything to be right across from Groton? Like, that again, Stu, is like, I’m like, I don’t think anybody thought about this. Well, they didn’t care. That’s what it was. They thought about it. They just, they don’t care and now it’s gonna come back to buy them.
David Blackmon [00:24:31] Tom Mumford has a great question here that I think we ought to put up here and answer. Didn’t these organizations request and receive exemptions from harming wildlife well prior to beginning? Am I remembering that correctly? Yes, they did have to file for takes, what are called takes for endangered species, marine mammals and other endangered species that they knew in advance their projects are gonna be killing. That’s why you apply for the takes. Am I misstating anything there?
Meghan Lapp [00:25:02] Um, no, although the takes were for levels of harassment, not killing. And this is a really big point because the incidental take authorization said that they could harass the mammals. They could not kill them. And if they did kill them, then the permits would be revoked and there would, you know, be action taken essentially. Right. So then all of a sudden they start serving, they start doing all of the and all of a sudden whales are washing up dead literally everywhere, up and up the coast, right? So you would think that that would cause them to go, hey, wait a second, you know, we want you to pause operations, we’re going to look at this issue, etc. And that never happened, obviously, because they just kept saying, la la la, la, you know, nothing to see here, and everything is fine, which it wasn’t. And the reality of this situation is, like some of the level A. Which are permanent deafness, which if you permanently deafen a whale, like it’s gonna die, right? It’s gonna get hit by a ship or it’s just gonna get disoriented or something, you know, that’s their primary means of, you know both navigation, obviously communication, you don’t see too great under the ocean. So they had, they were issued like level A takes of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Where they’ve already said even one whale dying would be a population level impact. And there’s all kinds of rules for everyone else, but, you know, really not them. And they said, well, don’t worry, we’re gonna do mitigation. And they say, you now, most of the time we’ll see them, but sometimes we won’t, but we’ll only miss the other kinds of whales. We’ll definitely see all the right whales, we’ll definitely 100% see all them. We won’t see all of the humpback whales, maybe, or the fin whales, or minky whales, but we’ll definitely see all of the right whales. You know, so you look at this stuff and you go, there’s no consistency. And what I noticed was, because I would comment sometimes on these when I could, and I’d read through the documents, they would have different, there were different methods of calculating and different methods of. You know, it was like different benchmarks for different projects adjacent to each other. You know? Well, we think this will happen here, but we think that this will happen here. And it was just to be able to move the projects forward. And I would sit there and I’m like, look, I’m not a marine biologist. OK, but I can read. I’m literate. And I’m thinking if you’re the guy who is reviewing this stuff, like who’s reviewing this stuff? You can’t just sit there like and be intellectually credible and say well this will happen over here but this will happen over there. Like who are these people? Who are reviewing these? And when you actually would look at the, because I started to dig into this because I was like you know, oil and gas has been happening a long time. I’m curious to see what their permits look like. And their permits, even for the same equipment, shallow hazard seismic stuff, these were just for the surveys, their permits said if you had a live stranding or marine mammal strandings within 50 kilometers of a survey, you had to immediately shut the survey down.
David Blackmon [00:28:17] You had to stop working.
Meghan Lapp [00:28:18] Right? You had to stop it and you had to do an investigation and all this. Well, that was happening all the time during the wind farm surveys and nobody did anything. So, you know, it just it’s credible, you know, and I think that they will find that stuff also upon review.
Tammy Nemeth [00:28:33] Meghan, I’d like to just play devil’s advocate here, right? Because you mentioned the oil and gas industry, and I’ve looked at some studies where they try to say that the development, for example, of oil and gas offshore in the Gulf of Mexico creates this ongoing noise issue for marine life in the gulf of Mexico. And how this is very problematic and more distressing and disturbing than anything that wind farms. Will ever do, right? I mean, this is the sort of hyperbole that they put forward. So how would you respond to those kinds of criticisms or comparisons that offshore oil and gasses just as damaging, if not more damaging in development and operation as wind farms? And then I have a second one.
Meghan Lapp [00:29:21] I think, you know, it is true that the deep water seismic is much stronger than what’s being used by the wind companies, right? But that’s deep, deep water out in the middle of the Gulf. The shallow hazard seismic, which they do to site pipelines, is the same equipment and the same everything as what they’re using to site, you know, offshore wind tables, right. So those those are the same. And they are doing, you know, or were, I should say, doing multiple surveys up and down the East Coast. And the real difference, and I’ve tried to point this out. Various times in my comments to the federal government is that the East Coast is an entirely different environment than the Gulf. The East Coast is a migratory superhighway for multiple species of large endangered baleen whales and other just large balean whales. So you have critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Critically endangered is like a serious like designation. Then you have endangered fin else. Then you have endangered sperm whales, then you have endangered, there are blue whales, and then you have humpback whales, you have minke whales, you have all these other whales, right? But there are certain endangered species, and they all go the same route, and they live year-round in the areas where the wind farms are sited. Not only do they migrate through there, there’s some that stay in these places year-around, and like if Look at the golf You have basically like rice’s whale, right? And there’s an area off of like Florida where you can’t develop oil and gas because it’s the habitat, like a year-round habitat of rice’s whales. Here they went to the place that is the year-around habitat of multiple endangered species and said it’s totally fine. So that’s very different. And if you’re gonna assess the impacts of an action, you have to look at where is the action happening. Right and look at what are the species that are there what’s what’s the ecosystem that’s there because it’s not going to have the same impact in one place as it will in another place like you’re not going hunt moose in Arizona you know so you have to look at what’s there and they didn’t do that they didn’t like the impacts on the east coaster for endangered species at least much much higher
Stuart Turley [00:31:32] Let me ask this, because when I’ve been out to the Gulf and been out to offshore rigs and those things, lots of marine life around an oil rig after the sonar and after everything else going through. There is not the same vibrations going on on an oil derrick. There is life everywhere. And I find it funny that we’ve, I’ve got a friend out in California. He could not get a permit because of a lizard. I mean, all, I mean we got lizards, thousands of lizards or billions as Trump would say, billions and billions that Carl Sagan, billions and billions of lizard and we can’t get it one, but now the wind farm on the West, on the west coast can kill as many bald eagles as they And the hypocrisy is a farmer tries to defend his flock against an eagle and he goes to jail, I’m sick of it.
Meghan Lapp [00:32:30] Right. And, you know, you’re right about the difference. So in the Gulf, you have reef fish, number one, different fish, different different species, different habitat. Right. In the Gulf you have a lot of reef fish. So what you’re doing is building a reef. Right. They like that. On the East Coast, we have some fish that will like, you know, rocky areas and reefs. We have a lots of rocks like in New England. It’s made out of rock. And, but we have a lot of schooling species and you have to harvest them on sand. So when you destroy the sand habitat, we already have a very strong mixture of rock and sand. So when we start taking away the sand habit, that’s what things like squid need, which are one of the species that we harvest, right? So that’s different. But also, you’re right. Once the oil rig is there, it’s not emitting anything else. These emit electromagnetic fields. And they emit low-frequency noise, constant, like, wah, wah, you know, constant. And there’s been studies that show that the frequencies of sound that are emitted by operating wind turbines, operating ones, are known to cause lesions in like the ear cavities of squid, and then they die. So that is, you now, that’s a problem. And they’re-
David Blackmon [00:33:44] They need no squid head ears.
Meghan Lapp [00:33:46] They’re not really ears. They’re called statuses. But it’s used for how they orient themselves and stuff. It’s kind of like, I don’t really know what else to compare them to, but yeah. So the physical impacts to the environment are much different. And you know, here’s another very interesting thing that I found from talking to fishermen who fished, used to fish near Block Island, or still do, but just in different places. The lobster guys who thought that the wind farms might be good for creating some kind of, you know… Rocky more rocky you know reefy kind of habitat which lobsters like rocks um and then the cod fish there was one fisherman who fished for cod fish out there and he said everything was fine before they turned them on once they turned him on there’s nothing you know all that stuff left the cod left they don’t like the noise they don’t like the low frequency noise they I don’t like the EMF. And the lobsters all left. So all those lobster guys that used to fish over there don’t fish there anymore. So, you know, it’s definitely a different dynamic for sure.
Tammy Nemeth [00:34:55] Um, if I could just put the second devil’s advocate point here. Um, so you talk about the EMF frequencies and the interference with shipping and, um, different radars and whatnot. How does that compare with what the European union has done offshore? Because they’re often used as the sort of example, offshore Scotland, offshore Europe in the English channel there, where there, where there’s, um oil derricks and whatnot in the North sea, they’re now putting wind turbines nearby. To provide clean energy and so on. And there has been very little complaints from European fishermen and others. And even in those massive shipping lanes in the English Channel and everything and off of Holland and whatnot. So how do they deal with those kinds of EMF issues and the fishing and whatnot? Do you know is there, is it comparable? Is there something that… You know, people would argue, well, Europeans can do it, why can’t North America?
Meghan Lapp [00:35:56] Right. So I’ll take that. I’ll answer that in two parts. First with the fishing impacts, then with the radar impacts. Okay. So the first part, yes, absolutely. Once I was actually in Denmark and there was supposed to be a bunch of Dutch guys there, but the Dutch didn’t come to the fisheries meeting. It was a fisheries conference because they were storming Amsterdam with flares to protest the taking of their fishing grounds. The Dutch are furious. They’re losing fishing grounds right, left, and center. I follow them on social media. They’re always protesting. Our fishing grounds are just being taken and destroyed. The problem is that over in Europe, they aren’t allowed to have a voice because the media does not allow them to have one. The UK fishermen have been furious about it. The Scottish guys are furious. There’s certain areas where they’re like, you just put this on this ground and you destroyed this fishery. They can identify the fisheries that have been destroyed. Um and the fishing grounds that have been destroyed so the european fishermen are are furious um and i actually read you know i read a document one time and it was the fishermen and the insurance companies and the wind companies all got together because the fishermen were like we want our fishing grounds and the win companies the insurance companies were like well you definitely aren’t allowed to fish in here because um it’ll cause too many problems for us and you know but they keep on taking, taking, and there was actually a study done. I want to say it was in 2022 and it was called Spatial Squeeze and it was a scientific, you know, like investigative report document where they talked to European fishermen and they said worst-case scenario between the fishing regulations and the massive amount of offshore wind farms that are eating up commercial fishing grounds in Europe, they said by 2050 you will not have fishing.
Stuart Turley [00:37:52] Wow.
Meghan Lapp [00:37:54] That was that was that and then with the national defense issues. So the DOE in the US did a series of webinar series in 2020 on some of the radar impact issues. And like for one of them, say, for example, in the UK. So since I want to say like 2019 through 2020 run around that like kind of time frame, the. The UK Ministry of Defense was basically giving prize money to anybody who could fix the problem because what they had done, like idiots, was say, we’re going to build them and then figure it out. So they started building in like, say 2012, they thought they had a solution to the radar interference problem for their defense radars. So, then they said, well… If you build a wind farm near one of these radars, you have to implement this mitigation measure. But the problem was they only modeled it. They didn’t actually test it. So they let Orsted go ahead and build a project in 2018. So they build this big project with the biggest turbines known at that time. They were eight megawatt turbines and they put it in front of this radar and then they implemented whatever the solution quote unquote was and after they built it, the UK Ministry of Defense said, yeah, it’s a problem. The mitigation measure didn’t work and it’s real big issue. And so now they’re still offering prize money to see like can anybody fix this. But I don’t think that you actually can really because that’s how radar works. You’d have to like have the radar not work You know, but then the real big example, though, that I point everybody to is that in 2024, December of 2024, Sweden, they killed 13 offshore wind projects in the Baltic because they said it would just destroy their national defense capabilities. And they’re concerned about Russia, you know, continuing to kind of push their way across the water. And they said, we are putting national defense first, we will not sacrifice our national defense capabilities for a quote unquote green energy project. And they said. If they had allowed those wind farms to go through, it would reduce their missile detection time by half, they wouldn’t be able to see planes and drones, and they would also have difficulty detecting submarines. So at least the Swedes thought critically about the situation and said, yeah, no, we’re not going to do this because they were concerned about Russia. And you know, but some of these other countries, it’s like, they’re off in la la land. They don’t care. They’re just like, oh, green energy. And they’re all jumping off the cliff like lemmings meanwhile. There’s real problems and the UK has acknowledged that there’s problems in the Ministry of Defense, but they keep building without fixing it, which the Biden administration was doing too, so it’s kind of like they knew that they had problems. Well, that’s the progressive way.
Stuart Turley [00:40:35] I find it amazing that we’re sitting here on a podcast that I know that we are often cut and shut down and because of free speech, you know, even though the anytime we speak negatively against Wynn, but in the UK, I find that very funny, Tammy, you were asking that question and I was about to say. I guarantee you it’s because they’re shutting those people down complaining on it. They arrest you for saying any, you know, bad things. So if you’re going to complain about your livelihood, they will come arrest you. So
Tammy Nemeth [00:41:20] Let me add here. So in the UK media, which is probably the most free of any in Europe, which is kind of scary. And at this point, they’re even less free than ever. But the way they were spinning it was that fishermen in the U.K. Were losing their fishing grounds because of France. So they tried to make it say that it was competition from the French and the Portuguese coming through and taking over the fishing grounds. And that the government was trying to negotiate some kind of settlement from France and Portugal to compensate the fishermen. At no point did they ever mention in the press that it was because of the siting of these wind installations. And with respect to the Swedish one, I remember when that was announced in December, and the spin was they don’t have the money, they need to refocus on better defense capabilities. They’re going to reconsider opening up nuclear power, they need reliable energy, blah, blah blah. At no point did they say it was because, at least in the media, that it was, because of the potential for not being able to detect through radar and the other EMF stuff or the missile launches. So that’s incredibly fascinating. And I’m so glad that you brought that up because I think this is one of these lessons learned that we ought to be. Looking at it be like why why would we want to replicate that in north america that makes no sense.
Meghan Lapp [00:42:53] Right and you know the only the outlets that I saw reporting on the defense stuff of Sweden and they were quoting the Swedish defense minister were like there was four c offshore and there was another one. You know I don’t know what what the UK was was you know saying about it but you know I saw the same thing happening here though in the sense of you know defense being ignored so I would go to the like all these wind meetings whether they were in person or webinar during COVID or whatever, right? And I remember Boam. In the U.S. Was the federal agency for leasing, offshore energy leasing. They were trying to identify the whole central Atlantic as a place to just sprinkle a whole bunch more wind farms. And I remember watching the United States Navy, okay? The Navy is on the webinar and they were like, there’s no area under consideration that does not interfere with our missions. That’s what they said. Okay, United States Navy guy.
David Blackmon [00:43:55] And that was during the Biden administration.
Meghan Lapp [00:43:57] Yes, yes. And, and bomb was like, uh, you know, and then the Navy would go and say, but we’re not in charge bombs in charge. I’m like, are you out of your minds? And even during the first Trump administration, they had done this wind compatibility assessment in like 2018 and they showed the whole East coast. And basically it was all red. The, like a lot of it was already said, this is a wind exclusion zone because we’ll interfere with national defense. And you go like, But if red means no, how come there’s projects in it? You know, you look at this and technically people would say, oh, well, you know, like the DOD would just defer. They just lay down and they say, well Bones in charge of officer leasing, we don’t do that. And I’m like, defense is kind of important. And so I would think that you could assert that.
Tammy Nemeth [00:44:50] Yeah, prioritization. They should be able to maybe under this Defense Department, sorry, Department of War. Maybe maybe they could take us take a position on this. But maybe, you know, they had all those climate people in the former Department of Defense where they were talking about how they were going to decarbonize the military.
Stuart Turley [00:45:12] Oh yeah, summer panels on submarines.
Tammy Nemeth [00:45:15] Like really.
David Blackmon [00:45:18] So all that’s, that’s going to be wound down in this presidency. Now they come back at the, the 20, 28 election goes the wrong way, but over the next four years, uh, that all going to get wound down and the Pentagon is going to, get into this argument. Uh, they’re just not quite there yet with their ducks in a row, but they, they will be doing that. And I think that means the future is pretty dim for these developers in the, in the Atlantic or anywhere in the United States offshore. Orsted has this rights issue that is 9.4 was valued at $9.4 billion. But over the weekend they announced they’re going to discount it to 64% of that value because they weren’t getting enough subscriptions. So they’re having a heavily.
Irina Slav [00:46:05] Sorry David, they’re still raising 9 billion, they are just issuing more shares.
David Blackmon [00:46:09] Oh, they’re issuing more shares. Yeah, but they still want to
Irina Slav [00:46:13] dilution at all.
David Blackmon [00:46:16] I mean, think about that means for the people, the holders of existing or stock. It’s just massively devaluing their holdings in that company. It’s amazing.
Tammy Nemeth [00:46:27] Well now that Norway has had their election and the Labor Party got back in and their ridiculous stupid coalition with the Greens, Greens who got four percent of the vote somehow think they’re going to hold balance of power. In any event, they’re back in, and they’re pushing all of this green stuff, like, and they own, Equinor owns how much of Orsted?
Meghan Lapp [00:46:51] 11%
David Blackmon [00:46:53] Yeah, it’s a significant amount. Yeah. And of course, Orsted, I mean, Equinor itself is 51% owned by the Norwegian government.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:07] And a big chunk of their revenue, Equinor’s revenue, goes directly into the wealth.
David Blackmon [00:47:17] So what’s going to happen, I’m…
Irina Slav [00:47:19] We want to put an end to oil and gas production in Norway.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:23] Yeah, that’s what they want. That’s what the Greens have come to. So yeah, what will Europe do then?
Stuart Turley [00:47:30] If the Norwegian election stops, aren’t they all grumped out about the price of their electricity since they’ve had the interconnect to the UK.
Tammy Nemeth [00:47:44] That’s why the government fell. That’s the coalition fell in the first place and they held the election. And they ended up getting back in with this ridiculous coalition again. And what’s fascinating is that one of the centrist parties, if they would switch over to the whatever progress group that has the second largest number of votes, then that progress group could have a coalition of more sensible, realistic minded people. So I don’t know if all of the negotiations have been completed on who is going to be forming the coalition, but it looks like the Labor government and the former head of NATO will still be in power pushing for basically phasing out no more new oil and gas fields, according to a court ruling in Norway back in May.
Stuart Turley [00:48:34] In Norway is 20% of the EU’s stuff from Russian gas. Nice.
David Blackmon [00:48:45] Well, Meghan, where do we go from here? What should we be looking for as next steps in this battle against these massive wind forms? Is there, are there upcoming hearings, events that we ought to be paying attention to?
Meghan Lapp [00:49:00] So not that I am aware of yet. I do know that there are some potential panels for nonprofits that they might be starting to do in the next few weeks kind of just discussing the issue. But as far as for the governmental side, I think it’s gonna be a wait and see game. And I kind of hope that the dominoes just keep falling, that they announce new, hey, we’re gonna put this one on pause, we’re going to put this on pause and we review everything. Um and then see what they do and then i think what is going to be very interesting is not only the cancelation of current you know leases slash projects i think it’s going to be very interested to see how they rewrite regulation for this because what i noticed in the biden administration um you know from vineyard win onwards so vineyard win was the first project that was approved federally That one, it was extremely like willy-nilly, right? Like nobody knew what they were doing. It was the first one, this guy’s doing this, this guy is doing this and the process was a joke. There was none, they made it up as they went. Then when they start to get to kind of the next round as they started to approve the other projects that were approved, they started to kind have a little bit more of a process. They would still change it though. They would change it from like lease to lease. And they would change it from project to project, but there was more of a, I suppose you could say typical, but it was very, very messed up. And I kind of am curious to see once the current leases and projects are dealt with, what is the Trump administration going to do to kind of rewrite federal regulation to either create a process for this or to, you know, change how it’s done? Because like I said before, the law says that you have to consider all these various, not consider, you have ensure these various things at every step of the process, which they didn’t do. They did no analysis at the beginning before the leasing. You know, that was really like the problem. There was no analysis. So like, they created conflicts all the way through because they never de-conflicted at the begining. So I’m curious to see what they do as far as. Creating a regulatory process that is consistent with the law I think that’ll probably be you know Probably the first two years is going to be dismantling and then the next two years will be rebuilding that’s kind of how I figure It’ll probably go
David Blackmon [00:51:29] Yeah, especially if the midterms go badly for the administration. I got to really focus heavily on rewriting those regulations. Um, so I think with this, we have eight minutes left to do our weekly articles. Meghan, we thank you so much for being here and we’re going to release you back to your vacation. Hope you enjoy it, but thank you. So much for coming on and doing the show today.
Tammy Nemeth [00:51:58] Thank you, Meghan.
Meghan Lapp [00:51:59] Thank you guys. Thanks so much.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:00] Great information. Thank you.
Stuart Turley [00:52:01] Thank you for fighting the fight.
David Blackmon [00:52:03] Yes, thank you for fighting to fight. And so Stu, we go to, where do we go?
Stuart Turley [00:52:13] I got too many slide decks going on here. There we are. There’s.
David Blackmon [00:52:18] OK. Here we go, there’s Tammy’s.
Stuart Turley [00:52:25] I’m trying to add something going on here. I’m not sure what it is. There we go.
Tammy Nemeth [00:52:33] I’ll just go super fast. Mark Carney released a new major projects office, first tranche of projects, and all of which had already been approved. So they’re saying they’re going to expedite approval of things that have already been improved. Go figure. Seems to be par for the course. So then they listed six more potential areas that they might be considering. And one of them is that Wind West, which is this huge. Offshore wind project off the coast of Nova Scotia, which happens to be through some of the migratory fish and whale areas that Meghan was talking about. So that’s very concerning that they want to move forward with that project. The second one has to do with Lion Electric, which the school busses, Quebec had paid a lot of money for. They have like 1,200, I think, school busses. David broke the story last week where. One of the busses spontaneously exploded. The battery started on fire. They had to get the kids off the bus and everything. So then they pulled all the busses off the route, but then they said, oh, that’s okay. We’ve checked it over and we’re gonna phase them back in starting today.
David Blackmon [00:53:48] It took them two days to figure that out, right?
Tammy Nemeth [00:53:51] Yeah, like really. And I’d be like, if I was a parent in that jurisdiction, I would not let my children on those busses. And so, you know, what are they thinking? That if one goes, what’s the odds that the others might go also? And just another thing about Lion Electric, where, you know, they went into bankruptcy, some other group has taken them over. Honestly, these ought to be pulled off the street. And you can find me at the name with report.substack.com and you can check out my stuff there. That’s it, thank you.
David Blackmon [00:54:27] Okay.
Stuart Turley [00:54:31] To go to the next one here. Sorry. We’ve got multiple people yelling at me and there we go. They’re Substack. There you go.
David Blackmon [00:54:40] Key agency sticks to its guns on peak oil demand. Well, that’s not really what happened. The key agency is the international energy agency and it is Javier Blas at Bloomberg broke the story last week that they’re going to reinstate, re-implement their former baseline modeling scenario of the existing, the current policies scenario. For projecting demand and supply into the future. This is a concession, I think, to Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who threatened to pull US support for the IEA in July if they didn’t go back to fact-based modeling instead of their fantasy-based modeling they’ve used over the last three years. The short-term energy outlook, what was the key point on that? Oh my God, I’ve forgotten. Let’s go to our arena stories. I can’t remember what the key point on that one was. I knew we were running out of time.
Stuart Turley [00:55:42] Oil oil prices at $55.
David Blackmon [00:55:46] Oh, yeah, they’re projecting oil price to drop to 50 to $52 in 2026. That’s the Energy Information Administration, which is a pretty reliable.
Irina Slav [00:55:55] There’s a consensus that was going to fall to 55.
Stuart Turley [00:56:01] Right, okay. And I’m calling hoo-ha on that and people can find you.
David Blackmon [00:56:07] You can find me at blackmon.substack.com and everything I write is there.
Irina Slav [00:56:16] I have two things to say to you today. Number one, from Financial Times, Orsted to sell shares at 67% discount in $9.4 billion rights issue. The second thing I have to say, to you, is that over the last six months, looking at the stock price chart, Allsted has fallen by 41%. In the 12 months. To September 2025, the stock has lost 56%. Make that what you will, but I will predict again that before the years end, all that is going to be on life support.
Tammy Nemeth [00:57:03] Wow. You know, it’s funny because you know when Biden brought in the Inflation Reduction Act, all these European companies were pressured to go and take advantage of the subsidies and everything else. And they did. And now that there’s a change in government, this is the consequence.
David Blackmon [00:57:24] Oh, and by the way, Orsted is 51% owned by the Danish government. So, uh, they’re probably, well, I would suspect before Orsted is allowed to go bankrupt, there will be a bail outcome.
Stuart Turley [00:57:37] I think we’re seeing is more and more bankruptcies. And you’re gonna see those that follow net zero and deindustrialization will be in a financial collapse. Those that go after realistic energy policies will have a financial reward.
Irina Slav [00:57:55] And I write at Irina Slav on energy. I forgot the name of my own Substack.
Stuart Turley [00:58:02] That’s fantastic. And I have to admit, I got to love Chris Wright. Chris Wright is just a rock star. The Chris Wright urges EU to ditch Russian oil and gas faster. Currently, they’re what, about 11%. They’re still using Russian natural gas. They’re still buying Russian LNG with the Siberia 2 pipeline that is going to be going through. There’s going to be no gas. It’s going to be redirected. President Putin last week had another speech and he said, I’m going to take all my gas. I’m taking my toys and I’m doing I’m going to Asia. I am going to take all of my stuff to Asia Good bye. So the EU is going to have to figure out real quick. How do you further? Do you want to deindustrialize? You want Norway to cancel their drilling and their stuff, and you want US LNG, which is twice what the Russian natural gas is, you’ve got a huge problem coming around the corner. I had fun writing this one. OPEC still sees tight oil market despite supply increases. And I used the, where’s the beef? And I actually had a very funny little story there. If you remember that where’s the beef and you see the old ladies drive flying around in the back of the car, you know, I love that old commercial. Where’s the glut? I’m seeing no glut. As long as China and India can keep the supply side going, we’re going to be fine on oil prices. If the EU and the UK totally fail, as long as China and the EU And India can outdo what the UK and the EU fail make up that we will still have a decent oil price meaning the supply side is going to be there for quite a while there is no glut and so you take a look at pricing the pricing at $50 is way off unless we have a depression in the
David Blackmon [01:00:26] Well, these projections, you know, IEA is projecting three million barrel a day glut by mid-year next year. And these projections are creating an expectation among traders that is already depressing the price of oil. Of course, that seems to be the goal, frankly, at the IEI. Exactly. Yes. And they will be very surprised very soon.
Stuart Turley [01:00:47] The rubber band effect will be in effect, which means when it snaps down, it’s going to snap up in the north. I’d say that you heard it here.
David Blackmon [01:00:59] We are out of time. We’re one minute over time. I know Stu’s got other things to do today. I don’t have anything left to do. I’m going to go walk, but thank you everyone for joining us on this week’s energy realities podcast. We’ll be right back here. Same time next week. Please join us.
Tammy Nemeth [01:01:16] Thank you.
Irina Slav [01:01:17] Thank you and thanks for the comments. Have a great week.
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