Trump’s $1 Billion TotalEnergies Deal Is ‘Worthless’

Current conditions: Temperatures in the Northeast are swinging from last week’s record 90 degrees Fahrenheit to a cold snap with the risk of freezing • After a sunny weekend, the United States’ southernmost capital — Pago Pago, American Samoa — is facing a week of roaring thunderstorms • It’s nearing 100 degrees in Bangui as the Central African Republic’s capital and largest city braces for another day of intense storms.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Oil prices jump as fragile Iran War ceasefire crumbles

The price of crude spiked nearly 7% in pre-market trading Sunday after the fragile ceasefire between Iran and the U.S.-Israeli alliance. Things had been looking up on Friday, when President Donald Trump announced what appeared to be a breakthrough in talks with Tehran in a post on Truth Social, saying Iran would “fully reopen” the Strait of Hormuz. By Sunday, however, the U.S. commander in chief was accusing Tehran of firing bullets at French and British vessels in the waterway in “a total violation of our ceasefire agreement,” adding: “That wasn’t nice, was it?” On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted again to announce that the U.S. had seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship attempting to traverse the strait. The prolonged conflict will only harden the historic rupture the severe contraction of oil and gas supply to the global market in modern history has triggered in global energy planning. “As happened with Russia’s war against Ukraine, the consequences of the Hormuz closure cannot simply be undone. That leaves countries — especially poorer countries dependent on fossil fuel imports — with a stark choice about how to fuel their future economic growth,” Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin wrote last week. “The crisis may have tipped the balance towards renewable and storage technology from China over oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf, Russia, or the United States.”

While the surge in gasoline costs “likely peaked,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright warned that the price at the pump could remain above $3 a gallon until 2027 during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.

2. Trump’s $1 billion TotalEnergies deal is ‘worthless’

The Trump administration pitched its deal to pay TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to cancel the company’s offshore wind leases as a win-win: The government would reimburse the French energy giant for every penny it spent to acquire the leases, and in exchange, Total would “redirect” the money to U.S. oil and gas development. But new document released Friday and analyzed by Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo show that “Americans’ side of the bargain appears to be worthless” given that “Total did not have to make any new investments to get its check.” Indeed, the company was already planning investments in the U.S. that would likely qualify under the deal.

Offshore wind investments are, meanwhile, moving forward. Danish developer Orsted has installed the first wind turbine at its Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York, offshoreWIND.biz reported. The turbine is the first of what’s expected to be 84 turbines totaling nearly a gigawatt of maximum capacity. It comes just weeks after Wind Scylla, the Cadeler-owned vessel specially designed to deploy turbines, completed work on Revolution Wind, Orsted’s flagship first project off the coast of Rhode Island. That the project is moving ahead as normal is a victory unto itself. The Trump administration pulled out every stop to halt construction of all offshore wind projects.

3. Supreme Court pollution ruling bodes ill for state climate lawsuits

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that energy companies facing lawsuits over environmental damage to the Louisiana waterfront from oil and gas production can move those cases from state to federal court, where more favorable outcomes are expected. In a unanimous decision in favor of Chevron, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “Congress has long authorized” the transfer from state to federal courts. The New York Times described the ruling as “a significant victory for oil companies.”

The decision comes two months after the Supreme Court agreed to hear Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which concerns jurisdiction for “public nuisance” claims. It’s still awaiting a hearing date. But the litigation, which dates back to 2018, came when the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, sued the oil giants Exxon Mobil and Suncor for damages from climate change, bringing charges under state law. “The oil companies tried repeatedly to get the case dismissed, arguing that it belonged in federal court. But time and again, the courts disagreed. The Supreme Court already rejected an earlier petition to review the question of whether the case belonged in state or federal court in 2023,” Emily wrote in February. “Now it has agreed to consider a slightly different petition, filed last summer, over whether federal law preempts Boulder’s state-law claims.”

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4. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly joins the nuclear energy rush

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly has agreed to work with the state of Indiana to build out “a future pathway for nuclear energy solutions” including “small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear technologies.” The drugmaker behind antidepressant Prozac and erectile dysfunction treatment Cialis signed a letter of intent with the state last month. The deal, first reported by Axios on Friday, marks the latest example of a big corporate power user laying out plans for atomic energy investments for something other than data centers. In 2022, the steelmaker Nucor signed a deal with nuclear developer NuScale to explore building a small modular reactor near one of its electric arc furnaces, and last year forged an alliance with The Nuclear Company to consider backing the startup’s efforts to establish a supply chain for building fleets of reactors. In 2023, Dow Chemical inked a deal with X-energy to use the next-generation nuclear developer’s high-temperature gas-cooled reactors to potentially swap out fossil fuels for splitting atoms as its industrial heat source.

Not all is looking rosy for the nuclear industry. Fermi America, the startup led by former Texas Governor Rick Perry and which promised to build a giant data enter complex backed by, isn’t just “faltering, it’s imploding,” according to a report by independent energy journalist Robert Bryce. But other projects are advancing. On Friday, the next-generation reactor startup Kairos Power broke ground on its demonstration project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Then, on Saturday, Bloomberg reported The Nuclear Company was moving forward with a bid to finish construction of either South Carolina's abandoned V.C. Summer nuclear plant or one of two other potential locations in the state.

5. Brazil makes a pitch for a full-fledged mineral industry

The Brucutu iron ore mine in southeastern Brazil.ALEXANDRE MOTA/CVRD/AFP via Getty Images

Brazil is racing to develop its critical minerals as the U.S. looks for new sources in the hemisphere that can help Washington loosen China’s grip over the metals. Just how to regulate the nascent industry is a hot topic in Brazilian politics right now. Lawmakers who back left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva are pushing to form a state-owned mining company. In a Sunday post on X, Lula boasted that Brazil “already holds the world’s largest reserve of niobium, the second largest of graphite and rare earths, and the third largest of nickel” — and “only 30% of the mineral potential” is mapped out as of yet. Following the lead of mineral-rich countries in Asia and Africa, Brazil said it would look to make deals for processing and refining. “We will not repeat the role of mere exporters of mineral commodities,” Lula wrote. “We are open to international partnerships that include stages of higher value added and technology transfer.”

That could be an opening for deals with China, which dominates the processing industry. Countries such as Indonesia and Zimbabwe banned exports of raw ore in a bid to capture more of the industrial supply chain. “There are a lot of countries that want something like this right now,” Tim Puko, a minerals analyst at the Eurasia Group, told me on X. “Brazil is one of the few with a good chance of pulling it off.”

THE KICKER

Japan may be facing record gas prices as the Iran War squeezed shipments of liquified natural gas. But it’s got some backup coming onto the grid from two sources of clean firm power. Unit 6 of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, a 1,356-megawatt Advanced Boiling Water Reactor shut down after Fukushima, has resumed commercial operation, World Nuclear News reported. Furusato Thermal Power has announced that the roughly 5-megawatt Waita No. 2 geothermal power plant, located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, has officially started commercial operations, just two years after construction started, ThinkGeoEnergy reported.

Editor's note: This article was updated after publication to include other sites The Nuclear Company is considering in South Carolina.