White House Announces First Offshore Wind Lease Sale

Offshore wind farm. (Photocreo Bednarek/Adobe Stock)

The White House announced its first offshore wind lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico, to open up those waters for companies to bid construct wind energy facilities, after curbing gas and oil company drilling.

The Biden administration said that this sale is an opportunity to contribute to America’s transition to “clean energy.”

The Feb. 22 announcement by the Department of the Interior to build windfarms in the Gulf, comes as the number of offshore oil and gas leases granted since Biden took office have shrunk to historic lows.

President Joe Biden has only leased 1.7 million offshore acres for oil and gas so far since January 2021, less than any president since President Richard Nixon, and about a third seen in the first two years of President Barack Obama’s term, according to the American Petroleum Institute (API).

The data shows that Biden had kept his promise to green advocates that he would shut down new oil and gas drilling, after he stated during his campaign that there would be “no more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore.”

Green energy advocates say that the administration will make up for the loss of oil and gas with offshore wind sales.

Interior Department Proceeds With Windfarm Leases

“America’s clean energy transition is happening right here and now. At the Department, we are taking action to jumpstart our offshore wind industry and harness American innovation to deliver reliable, affordable power to homes and businesses,” said Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement.

“There is no time to waste in making bold investments to address the climate crisis, and building a strong domestic offshore wind industry is key to meeting that challenge head on.”

The lease sale is part of the plan announced by Haaland in 2021 to meet the White House’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity by 2030.

Interior had previously approved two commercial-scale offshore wind projects, as part of its effort to “grow America’s clean energy economy.”

Three offshore wind lease auctions have been held already, including one off the coast of New York and another off California.

The Gulf of Mexico lease sale will auction three sites off the coast of Galveston, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana.

“America’s clean energy transition is happening right here and now,” Haaland exclaimed.

“At the Department, we are taking action to jumpstart our offshore wind industry and harness American innovation to deliver reliable, affordable power to homes and businesses.”

Haaland has also ordered an environmental review of ten offshore wind projects, and pushed for further exploration to add additional Wind Energy Areas in Oregon, Gulf of Maine, and the Central Atlantic.

DEI Ideology to Determine Green Energy Contracts

The Biden administration announced that environmental and racial “equity” justice will be taken into account as it considers lease proposals.

Interior said it will abide by Biden’s executive order on “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” during its facilitation of the wind lease auctions.

The department will consider “lease stipulations to ensure that communities, particularly underserved communities, are considered and engaged with early and often throughout the offshore wind energy development process, that potential impacts and benefits from lessees’ projects are documented, and lessees’ project proposals are informed by or altered to address those impacts and benefits.”

Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will order wind farm operators to contribute to a fisheries compensatory mitigation fund to redress “potential negative impacts to commercial and for-hire recreational fishers caused by offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Lessees will also have to provide a regular progress report summarizing their “engagement with Tribes and ocean users potentially affected by proposed offshore wind activities.”

Worsening Energy Inflation

Meanwhile, toward the end of 2022, the Biden administration allowed the federal government’s five-year program for offshore oil and gas leasing to expire without renewal for the first time in history.

“A lapse in the federal offshore leasing program could jeopardize American energy security, cost thousands of jobs, and risk billions in lost federal, state and local revenues, according to analysis prepared by Energy and Industrial Advisory Partners,” wrote API Senior Vice President for Communications Megan Bloomgren.

This deliberate act by the White House would make new offshore leases difficult until a new plan is in place.

Energy prices under Biden have skyrocketed since 2021, becoming a key factor in high inflation nationwide.

The only offshore oil and gas lease sales that have taken place over the past two years were those reportedly ordered by Congress or by court order.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry said that it needs more time to discover sites to drill and for searching for energy reserves offshore.

However, the deliberate slowdown in offshore lease sales has caused massive uncertainty in the energy sector, which will likely worsen supply problems in the near future.