Biden Announces First Gulf Of Mexico Offshore Wind Lease Sale

The Biden Administration will announce on Thursday the first-ever offshore wind lease sale in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico which will be held in late August as part of the efforts to build 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030, the White House said.

Today, the Department of the Interior (DOI) is issuing the final sale notice for the first-ever offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, which will take place on August 29, the White House added.   

The sale will include one lease area of 102,480 acres offshore Lake Charles, Louisiana, and two lease areas totaling nearly 200,000 acres offshore Galveston, Texas.

The areas included in the sale have an estimated clean energy potential to power nearly 1.3 million American homes, according to the Biden Administration.

The Administration said in February this year that offshore wind rights in the Gulf of Mexico—the stronghold of the U.S. oil and gas production and export facilities – would contribute to the U.S goals of deploying 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030, as well as 15 GW specifically of floating offshore wind by 2035.

“Floating technologies are key to harnessing about two-thirds of U.S. offshore wind energy potential, including along the West Coast, Gulf of Maine, and other deep-water areas,” the Administration said at the time.

Next month’s Gulf of Mexico offshore wind lease sale comes after similar lease sales in the New York Bight, Carolina Long Bay, and northern and central California.

In addition, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said earlier this week that it had completed another step in reviewing a potential offshore wind research lease in the Gulf of Maine.  

Earlier this month, BOEM approved a large-scale offshore wind power project that it says would power more than 380,000 homes and “create more than 3,000 good-paying jobs.”

The Ocean Wind 1 project, to be located off the coast of New Jersey, will have a capacity of 1.1 GW. 

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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