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BLUE STATES SUE TRUMP OVER NEW YORK OFFSHORE WIND LEASE BUYOUT DEAL: New York is leading a coalition of seven Democratic-led states that is suing the Trump administration over its buyout deal struck with TotalEnergies in March, killing a federal offshore wind lease. 

The details: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James announced this morning that they were suing the administration over the deal, calling it an illegal payoff. Attorneys general from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont have also signed onto the suit. 

They claim that the Interior Department violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act in making the deal, as the agency failed to hold a hearing to find that continuing the lease would likely cause serious harm to life, property, national security, or the environment before canceling it. 

If you forgot, the Trump administration has defended the deal, saying it was a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement of what TotalEnergies paid the federal government for the lease, as well as a second water lease in North Carolina. Both leases were canceled in March in exchange for $928 million. 

Read more from Callie here. 

INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY WARNS OF CRUDE INVENTORIES HITTING HISTORIC LOWS: The International Energy Agency is warning that global stockpiles of crude oil are hitting historic lows ahead of peak summer demand, likely causing further upward pressure on prices in the coming weeks. 

The Paris-based agency released its monthly oil report today, reporting that global oil inventories fell by more than 250 million barrels between March and May. 

In the U.S., the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is approaching all-time lows. Recent data released by the Energy Information Administration reveal that the U.S. had roughly 365.1 million barrels in the SPR in the week ending on May 22 – down by more than 50 million barrels since the war in Iran began. 

If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, these drawdowns are only expected to continue. 

“We’re seeing stock draws continuing into the summer, and with the possibility or the likelihood that we reach critical levels or historical low levels just ahead of the peak summer demand,” said Toril Bosoni, the IEA Head of Oil Industry and Markets Division.

Where are prices at? Traders remained cautious in their pricing for crude today, as there has been little movement on a ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran this week. Just after 3 p.m. EDT, international benchmark Brent crude was up by 1.19% and priced at $96.11 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate was also up 1.84% and selling at $93.86 a barrel. 

URENCO PLANNING MASSIVE EXPANSION OF URANIUM ENRICHMENT FACILITY: Urenco USA has said it will be expanding the capacity of the only commercial facility in the United States that is able to enrich uranium – a crucial step for bolstering the domestic nuclear fuel supply. 

Some background: Urenco is the only commercial-scale producer of enriched uranium in the U.S., and first began operations in 2010. It currently has the capacity to meet around one-third of enrichment needs for nuclear power plants in the U.S., with most of the industry still relying on foreign imports. Roughly 25% of the enriched nuclear reactor fuel used in the U.S. comes from Russia alone. 

The details: Urenco plans to expand its uranium enrichment capacity by nearly 50%, opening a new plant at its National Enrichment Facility in Eunice, New Mexico. There, the company plans to install 2.1 million separative work units of new enrichment capacity and install up to 24 cascades of centrifuges. 

The new plant will primarily focus on low-enriched uranium, which is used to power light water reactors. This enriched uranium also serves as a feedstock for high-assay low-enriched uranium, which will be used in advanced reactor designs such as small modular reactors. 

RELATED – A WARNING AGAINST USING COLD WAR-ERA PLUTONIUM: The expansion comes as the Trump administration has moved to reduce its reliance on foreign nuclear fuel and rapidly expand the domestic supply of enriched uranium to meet Trump’s broader goal of quadrupling nuclear capacity in the U.S. by 2050. 

As we touched on in last week’s newsletter, one avenue the administration is taking to bridge the fuel gap is to allow private companies to access Cold War-era plutonium to fuel their advanced reactors. 

Negotiations over whether companies, including Oklo and Standard Nuclear, can access the plutonium have yet to be finalized and Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, a long-time advocate for nuclear nonproliferation, is now urging the administration to cancel any potential deals. 

In a letter addressed to the president, Markey warned it could set a dangerous precedent globally.

“For five decades, the United States has avoided the commercial use of plutonium and opposed the spread of technology to separate plutonium from used reactor fuel,” Markey wrote. “We did so to prevent nations with nuclear power plants (such as Iran) from being able to extract plutonium from that fuel, which they—or terrorists into whose hands it could fall—could use to make nuclear weapons.”

You can read the full letter here. 

LOUISIANA AND OKLAHOMA PICKED FOR RARE EARTHS PROJECTS: The Trump administration is ramping up its “mine, baby, mine” agenda, selecting two projects in Louisiana and Oklahoma that it says will strengthen the domestic supply chain of rare earths. 

The details: The Department of Energy announced it is awarding $134 million for the two projects, which will focus on showcasing the commercial viability of recovering and refining rare earths found in waste streams. 

This includes rare earths such as praseodymium, neodymium, terbium, and dysprosium. All of these are crucial for advanced manufacturing, defense systems, and high-performance magnets used in electric motors and the energy industry. 

The Louisiana project, led by the Colorado School of Mines, will use the funds to design, construct, and operate a rare earths demonstration facility in St. John the Baptist Parish. It will primarily extract the rare earth elements out of “red mud” and refine them into metals. 

In Oklahoma, Phoenix Tailings will also design, construct, and operate a demonstration-scale facility to produce rare earth metals extracted from industrial waste-derviced feedstocks. 

“To achieve energy independence, the United States needs to find value in overlooked resources,” Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson said in a statement. “By expanding our capabilities to recover and process rare earth elements from waste products, these projects will reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources and improve the resilience of our supply chains.”

UNITED KINGDOM TARGETS 87% EMISSIONS REDUCTION BY 2040: The United Kingdom’s Labour Party government said it will target an 87% emissions reduction from 1990 levels by 2040, in line with the advice of its independent Climate Change Committee. 

The U.K. has a legally binding target of net-zero emissions by 2050. But, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said that the target was also justified by the need to develop alternative energy sources to reduce reliance on fossil fuels in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Iran conflict, and other world events that have disrupted markets. 

“As Britain faces the second fossil fuel shock of the decade, the only way to protect family and business finances is to drive for clean homegrown power that we control,” he said in a statement, according to ABC News. 

The target, though, has become increasingly controversial in the country. The Conservative Party has withdrawn support for it. Critics of the target have said that the U.K. should increase drilling for oil to boost energy security, and bashed the committee’s calls for making lifestyle changes to meet the goals, such as eating less meat. 

El NIÑO INCOMING: The likelihood of an El Niño event this summer is very high at 80%, the World Meteorological Organization warned today, with a 90% chance it continues into November. 

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres issued a warning about climate change in response to the forecast, saying that “El Niño conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world” and calling for ending the use of fossil fuels.

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said that the world needs to be prepared for a strong El Niño. The last such event was the El Niño of 2023-2024, which was one of the five strongest ever and played a role in the record-high temperatures of 2024. 

What it means for the U.S.: Although every El Niño is different, typically they are associated with heavy rainfall in the southern U.S., as well as dry conditions in parts of the Midwest. It also could mean fewer hurricanes in the Atlantic. 

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ENDS OCEAN MONITORING SYSTEM: The National Science Foundation has moved to dismantle large portions of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $368 million system of deep-ocean sensors and research infrastructure deployed across several regions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Examiner’s Rena Rowe reports. 

Scientists have relied on the system for more than a decade to track greenhouse gases, ocean temperatures, marine heat waves, and coastal flooding. 

An NSF spokesman said the decision “aligns with NSF’s wider strategy to have a nimbler approach to prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies.” 

An example of what will be affected: One of the sites affected is the Irminger Sea, located between Greenland and Iceland in the North Atlantic, which has provided researchers with continuous measurements of ocean and atmospheric conditions since it was established roughly a decade ago.

JUDGE BLOCKS PLAN TO DISMANTLE BOULDER CLIMATE RESEARCH HUB: The Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the Boulder-headquartered National Center for Atmospheric Research has been put on hold by a federal judge.

Colorado U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson, an Obama appointee, issued a preliminary injunction halting the plan yesterday, Colorado Public Radio reports, in response to a lawsuit by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a nonprofit organization that oversees the climate research hub. 

In announcing that the NCAR would be dismantled late last year, Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought claimed that it was one of the “largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”

The complaint against the action, though, had alleged that the move was in retribution for Colorado imprisoning former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was sentenced for election interference in 2020. Peters was recently released. 

RUNDOWN 

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