A federal court has thrown out key Endangered Species Act (ESA) analyses of oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico, which will be vacated as of Dec. 20, 2024. The United States District Court for the District of...more
The U.S. Department of the Interior on Sept. 29, 2023, announced its long-awaited Five-Year Offshore Leasing Plan as required by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (the Plan)....more
BOEM held its first-ever auction for wind energy lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico on August 29, 2023. The three lease areas up for auction covered a combined 301,746 acres off the coast of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and...more
After years of blunted growth and false starts, the US is finally scaling up offshore wind. While most progress had been spurred by state policies incenting projects in the Atlantic Ocean off the East Coast, the federal...more
On August 29th, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) held the first auction for offshore wind areas in the Gulf of Mexico. Sheppard Mullin’s preview of the auction can be accessed here...more
On July 21, 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) issued a Final Sale Notice (FSN) for offshore wind leases covering three areas on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). The auction will...more
President Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia last Thursday as his administration announced the first-ever sale of offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Mexico, which caps several years of advancing offshore wind in the Pacific...more
On May 30, 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced its final environmental assessment (EA) of the effects of site characterization and site assessment activities associated with leasing federal waters in...more
The Biden Administration bolstered its ambitious clean energy goals this week by announcing the Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Clean Hydrogen report, along with $750 million in funding for research, development, and...more
On December 9, 2022, Guyana released the preliminary terms for an oil and gas tender covering a total of 14 offshore blocks, including 11 deep water blocks and three shallow water blocks.1 Guyana estimates that the blocks...more
After the landmark prices received for eight offshore wind leases in the New York Bight, and with great anticipation for the upcoming December 6, 2022, lease auction for the Humboldt and Morro Bay Wind Energy Areas (WEAs) off...more
The Inflation Reduction Act (the Act), which passed the U.S. Senate on Aug. 7, 2022, requires that previously announced offshore lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska be held during the next two years....more
Vents de Carême – Cajun French term for "strong spring winds, 'March winds'" (Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole and American Indian Communities (Univ. of Miss. Press, 2010, p. 646); literally...more
In a recent Notice of Inquiry, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) signaled that it may free up radio spectrum for offshore broadband networks and connectivity to land-based systems to support next...more
There are only a handful of things you can count on in life: death, taxes, and hurricanes. This is especially true for those of us living along the Gulf Coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)...more
In Environmental Defense Center et al. v. BOEM et al (No. 19-55526), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 3, 2022, invalidated the U.S. Department of Interior's issuance of dozens of permits for well...more
On February 1, 2022, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards’ Climate Initiatives Task Force submitted its 177-page Climate Action Plan, which proposes a goal of 5 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind (OSW) power generation by 2035...more
With the oil and gas industry seeking ways to adapt to our current climate-driven world, some might argue that the oil and gas industry is leading the global energy transition. It is happening across the industry from the...more
The US Department of the Interior (DOI) announced plans to expand offshore wind development off the coasts of New York and New Jersey by proposing a lease sale it strives to complete by the end of this year. More...more
The Biden administration continues to take critical steps that will help them meet their goal of installing 30 gigawatts of wind energy by 2030. New York Bight Proposed Lease Sale - On Friday June 11, the Bureau of...more
On June 8, 2021, the Department of the Interior (DOI) announced that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) intends to issue a request for information (RFI) to assess interest in potential offshore wind development in...more
Earlier this week, the Biden Administration announced its intent to consider further expansion of offshore wind development in the Gulf of Mexico. This announcement comes two weeks after the Biden Administration announced an...more
On April 19, 2021, eleven years since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report issued to Congress criticizing the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Safety and...more
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that it has identified the first two regions where Aquaculture Opportunity Areas (AOAs) will be located in federal waters off Southern California and in the...more
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently held the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) does not have the authority to regulate aquaculture under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and...more