Bureau of Ocean Energy Management – Global Power Law & Policy

BOEM Issues Final Sale Notice for Offshore Wind Lease Areas in Carolina Long Bay

Mar 30 2022

U.S. Energy, Infrastructure, and Resources Alert

By: Stanford D. Baird, Kenneth J. Gish, Jr, Nathan C. Howe, David L. Wochner, Kimberly B. Frank, Ankur K. Tohan

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold its next offshore wind lease auction on 11 May 2022, for two lease areas in the Carolina Long Bay. The lease areas comprise 110,091 acres off the coast of North and South Carolina. The auction date will occur weeks ahead of a 10-year moratorium on offshore energy leases imposed in 2020 by the Trump administration prohibiting auctions of leases for wind, in addition to oil and gas, off the coasts of North and South Carolina beginning on 1 July 2022.

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Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Propels the U.S. Offshore Wind Industry

Feb 04 2022

U.S. Energy, Infrastructure, and Resources and Environment, Land, and Natural Resources Alert

By: Gail H. Conenello, Nathan C. Howe, Ankur K. Tohan, David L. Wochner

The flurry of offshore wind activity off the U.S. Eastern Seaboard continues, as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has announced recently it will hold an auction on 23 February 2022, to lease six new areas for offshore wind development in the New York Bight. The six lease areas will be located off the coasts of New York and New Jersey and will comprise 488,201 total acres. Such acreage should be sufficient to develop an estimated 5.6 gigawatts (GWs) of new offshore wind capacity, enough to power nearly two million homes. The six new lease areas will add to the 18 existing lease areas for offshore wind development that currently exist off the U.S. East Coast. This new lease sale combined with other recent BOEM developments exemplifies the Biden Administration’s commitment to the development of offshore wind resources in the United States.

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D.C. Circuit Affirms That Offshore Wind Lease Does Not Trigger NEPA Review

Jun 03 2021

By: J. Timothy Hobbs, Ankur K. Tohan, Robert M. Smith, David L. Wochner, Natalie J. Reid

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) does not need to conduct full environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) when granting an offshore wind farm lease, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed. The decision followed a lawsuit by commercial fishing organizations and seaside municipalities who claimed that BOEM violated NEPA and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) when it auctioned an offshore lease to Equinor (formerly Statoil) without performing an environmental review of the anticipated windfarm project. The decision puts to rest the question of whether a mere lease sale may trigger extensive environmental review under NEPA, potentially streamlining the initial lease acquisition process, but also requiring the investment of significant funds before developers have cleared environmental review.

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