Earlier this year I want to say June I staffed a hearing over this and the biggest take away I got was that some of these loans were never official they were really just announcements to try and get votes and/or get the Trump Admin to keep them.

This loan in particular was actually a really good one from the DOE as a huge issue was a ton of legal cases against this project. The loan essentially was helping stop the 10 plus years of litigation being thrown at the project. Unlike with Intel from what I have read the stake in the company is actually pretty small and in return the company gets longer to replay the loan which they were going to need because of the litigation.

Also this will further stop the completely wasteful and judiciary malpractice I would say environmental groups have been committing in launching lawsuit after lawsuit against this project from every angle they could.