December 19, 2016 — A Norwegian energy company that operates in 36 countries was the provisional winner Friday of an auction for the lease rights to build a wind farm off the coast of Sandy Hook.
Statoil, which operates many oil and gas fields on the Norwegian continental shelf, bid $42.5 million to lease nearly 80,000 acres of the Atlantic Ocean seafloor about 18 miles southeast of Sandy Hook and 12.5 miles south of Long Beach, on Long Island.
The online auction, held by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, started with six bidders, and lasted for 33 rounds before Statoil emerged victorious.
The auction came just a year after the Obama administration awarded leases to two companies to build wind farms off the southern coast of New Jersey. On Monday, the first offshore wind farm in the country started operating off Block Island in Rhode Island. The 30-megawatt farm was built by Deepwater Wind.
“This auction underscores the growing market demand for renewable energy among our coastal communities,” said Sally Jewell, U.S. secretary of the interior. She called the auction “another milestone for the U.S. offshore wind energy program.”
The agency already conducted a study to determine the visual impact of a hypothetical wind farm in the area to be leased. The simulation shows how a wind farm would look from Fire Island and Jones Beach on the Long Island coast, as well as from Sandy Hook and Asbury Park along the New Jersey coast.
From Sandy Hook and Asbury Park, a wind farm would appear as a series of tiny white dots on the horizon — barely visible. The simulations can be viewed online here.
Lawsuit fighting plan
This month a coalition of shore communities and fishing groups in four states had filed a petition asking a federal court to stop the auction, saying the area included in the lease is vital to commercial and recreational fishermen who catch everything from squid and scallops to flounder and sea bass.
An agreement was reached to allow the auction to proceed, but the lease will not be final until several other steps take place and the court can consider the fishing groups’ complaints.
The lead plaintiff is the Fisheries Survival Fund, which represents the Atlantic scallop industry. Other plaintiffs include the borough of Barnegat Light, the Garden State Seafood Association and the Fishermen’s Dock Co-operative. A hearing is scheduled for Feb. 8.
The plaintiffs argued that the federal government didn’t consider the effect on the region’s fishermen of leasing the triangular area, which includes documented squid and scallop fishing grounds.
The area actually auctioned Friday is slightly smaller than originally intended, as a way to exclude an environmentally sensitive section of seafloor known as the Cholera Bank, which has an irregular bottom that attracts an abundance of sea life. As a result, it has long been a favorite spot for fishermen to gather year-round.