The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is due to receive responses to its call for information and nominations to assess commercial interest in wind energy leasing in a proposed area in the outer continental shelf offshore Oregon. The area for potential leasing consists of nearly 7 million acres. The U.S. Interior Department’s 2021-2025 leasing strategy includes up to seven new offshore wind lease sales in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico, in order to meet the Biden administration’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030. By 2025, the agency plans to review construction and operation plans of at least 16 commercial projects, which represent over 19 gigawatts of offshore wind energy.

The Bureau of Land Management will offer about 3,405 acres in Montana and North Dakota, and 160 acres in Utah at its oil and gas lease sales scheduled for June 28, 2022. The move is in compliance with a court ruling that blocked the Biden administration from implementing a pause on new drilling leases set forth in an executive order issued in January 2021. The sale follows the Department of the Interior’s November 2021 report that recommended an overhaul of the federal oil and gas program. The agency will apply the first increased royalty rate of 18.75 percent for the leases sold, in keeping with rates charged by states and private landowners. The agency has adjusted its lease sale dates for Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming to June 29-30 from the previous date of June 22-23.

The Bureau of Land Management will hold a virtual public meeting to discuss the proposed SunZia Southwest Transmission Project which aims to transport up to 4,500 megawatts, primarily renewable energy, from New Mexico to markets in Arizona and California. The project would consist of two 500 kilovolt transmission lines across approximately 520 miles of federal, state, and private lands between Central New Mexico and Central Arizona. The agency has issued a draft review analyzing the potential environmental impacts of the project. Comments are due by Aug. 1.

The U.S. Energy Department is due to issue a draft supplemental impact statement for the Alaska liquefied natural gas Project. The department issued a notice of intent last year to conduct a supplement review including two Alaska-specific studies: upstream analysis of potential environmental impacts associated with natural gas production on the North Slope of Alaska and life cycle analysis to calculate emissions for LNG exported from the project. Recently, the agency decided to conduct additional modeling on the options associated with managing carbon dioxide produced with, and removed from, the natural gas supplying the proposed project. READ MORE