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Wednesday
30 Aug 2023

First-Ever Gulf of Mexico Offshore Wind Lease Sale Underway

30 Aug 2023  by offshorewind   
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has kicked off the offshore wind energy lease sale for the Gulf of Mexico. As of 9:00 EST (15:00 CET), BOEM will be receiving bids for three areas on the Outer Continental Shelf off Louisiana and Texas.

The offshore wind energy areas (WEAs) being offered today include one site of 102,480 acres offshore Lake Charles, Louisiana, and two lease areas totalling nearly 200,000 acres offshore Galveston, Texas.

According to information BOEM shared earlier, the three areas have the potential to accommodate over 3.6 GW of installed capacity which can power almost 1.3 million households. Seeing the capacities that the winners of the previous few lease sales announced after those auctions were completed, it is likely that the lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico could also house projects totalling much more than 3.6 GW.

Gulf of Mexico wind lease areas offshore Louisiana and Texas; Image: BOEM

The Department of the Interior issued the final sale notice (FSN) for the Gulf of Mexico on 20 July, when US President Joe Biden announced the first-ever offshore wind auction in this area would take place on 29 August.

The FSN, among other things, also provides a list of the companies that BOEM prequalified for the lease sale which has significantly expanded since the initial list was published in the Proposed Sale Notice (PSN).

As reported in the Premium news on our sibling site Offshore Energy in March, BOEM had prequalified eight bidders by the time the PSN was issued, including Avangrid, Shell and TotalEnergies. The Final Sale Notice contains 15 companies, with Equinor and RWE joining the list, among others. (It is worth noting that not all prequalified bidders will necessarily participate in the lease sale.)

The 15 developers eligible to bid for offshore wind lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico as per the FSN are:

547 Energy LLC

Avangrid Renewables, LLC

Coastal Offshore Renewable Energy LLC

energyRe Offshore Wind Holdings, LLC

Equinor Wind US LLC

Gulf Coast Offshore Wind LLC

Gulf Wind Offshore LLC

Hanwha Offshore North America LLC

Hanwha Q CELLS USA Corp

Hecate Energy LLC

Invenergy GOM Offshore Wind LLC

RWE Offshore US Gulf, LLC

Shell New Energies US LLC

TotalEnergies Renewables USA, LLC

US Mainstream Renewable Power, Inc

 

BOEM will hold the lease sale in the form of an online auction that will have a series of rounds and will announce the provisional winners for each of the lease areas shortly after the auction ends.

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