Dominion Secures OK to Restart Work on Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind
Dominion Energy Inc. and its 50% partner in the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project have received a federal judge’s permission to resume work on the $11.2 billion complex.
Judge Jamar Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Jan. 16 granted a request for a preliminary injunction from Dominion, which had challenged the Trump administration’s December order halting all work on a handful of offshore wind farms for 90 days on national-security grounds.
“Our team will now focus on safely restarting work to ensure CVOW begins delivery of critical energy in just weeks,” Dominion officials said in a statement. “While our legal challenge proceeds, we will continue seeking a durable resolution of this matter through cooperation with the federal government.”
If work proceeds uninterrupted, CVOW will be fully built out by late this year. The project comprises 176 turbines that will generate a combined 2.6 gigawatts as well as three offshore substations. Dominion nearly two years ago sold half of the project to infrastructure investment firm Stonepeak Partners LP for $3 billion.
Word of Walker’s ruling on Dominion’s request came at the end of a week in which judges in the District of Columbia issued similar decisions in favor of the entities building Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island (Orsted is backing that project) and Empire Wind offshore New York (which is being developed by Equinor). If completed as planned, Revolution will have 65 turbines while Empire will have 54.
Dominion executives will report the company’s fourth-quarter earnings late next month. The company’s shares (Ticker: D) closed essentially unchanged at $61.09 on Jan. 20, when the broader market fell about 2%, after rallying sharply last week on the positive legal rulings. Over the past six months, they are up about 5% and the company’s market capitalization is now about $52 billion.
About the Author
Geert De Lombaerde
Senior Editor
A native of Belgium, Geert De Lombaerde has more than two decades of business journalism experience and writes about markets and economic trends for Endeavor Business Media publications T&D World, Healthcare Innovation, IndustryWeek, FleetOwner and Oil & Gas Journal. With a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he began his reporting career at the Business Courier in Cincinnati and later was managing editor and editor of the Nashville Business Journal. Most recently, he oversaw the online and print products of the Nashville Post and reported primarily on Middle Tennessee’s finance sector as well as many of its publicly traded companies.