Saving Seafood

Dems request probe of offshore agency reorganization

July 9, 2026 — Top Democrats on Wednesday called on Congress’ watchdog to investigate the Trump administration’s decision to merge two existing bureaus within the Interior Department to oversee offshore oil and gas, wind and mining.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and House Natural Resources ranking member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether a consolidation could undermine beefed up oversight created after the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil disaster in 2010.

The letter — also signed by California Democrats Sen. Alex Padilla and Rep. Luz Rivas — zeroes in on the administration’s decision in April to consolidate the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to create a new Marine Minerals Administration.

Read the full article at E&E News

BOEM Initiates First Step to Explore Potential for Outer Continental Shelf Space Launch & Recovery

July 7, 2026 — The following was released by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management:

Supporting the Trump Administration’s bold vision to strengthen U.S. space leadership, launch capacity, re-entry, and recovery infrastructure, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management today announced the publication of a Request for Information to explore the potential use of the Outer Continental Shelf for offshore space launch and re-entry activities.

The request, scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on July 8, opens a 30-day comment period for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to gather technical, environmental, and operational information from industry, researchers and other stakeholders that will help inform potential future activities, interagency coordination, and planning for offshore space launches and recovery.

Trump Administration to Buy Back Four More Offshore Wind Leases

June 18, 2026 — Continuing its strategy of canceling offshore wind projects by buying back the leases in exchange for other energy investments, the Department of the Interior announced its third agreement. The administration has committed nearly $2.6 billion to canceling offshore wind leases even as the strategy is being challenged in court and by regulators.

Invenergy will voluntarily terminate four offshore wind leases it purchased in the past from the government and will redirect the investments toward other domestic energy sources, said the Department of the Interior. It valued the four leases at $765 million for one lease in the New York Bight for a New Jersey wind farm, two for floating offshore wind farms in Maine, and one off the coast of California.

The largest and most advanced of the projects was Leading Light Wind, which had submitted its offshore wind project bid to the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) in August 2023. It called for up to 2.4 GW, which would have made it the largest in the United States. It would have been more than 40 miles off the coast near Atlantic City, New Jersey, and included a battery storage option that would provide 253 MW of advanced energy storage, but it had yet to submit a Construction and Operations Plan proposal to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

How a Massachusetts offshore wind case could impact the US Wind fight in Maryland

June 16, 2026 — A federal court fight in Massachusetts over offshore wind is now playing a role in the ongoing legal battle over the proposed US Wind project off Maryland’s coast.

As WBOC has covered extensively, the Maryland lawsuit was filed in 2024 by the Town of Ocean City and other plaintiffs challenging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of US Wind’s Construction and Operations Plan off the coast of Worcester County under President Joe Biden.

On April 13, 2026, Ocean City and its fellow plaintiffs filed for a motion of summary judgment, requesting federal judge Stephanie Gallagher to essentially reverse BOEM’s approval of the project without bringing the case to trial. The federal government was given until June 26 to respond.

Read the full article at WBOC

US prepares to auction leases for seabed mining blocks in federal waters

May 28, 2026 — The U.S. agency responsible for overseeing deep-sea mining in federal waters is preparing to auction off seabed blocks within months — a step that could kick-start commercial-scale deep-sea mining and make the U.S. one of the first countries to allow it.

Deep-sea mining has not yet begun anywhere in the world. Opponents say it could cause widespread and irreversible damage to the marine environment if it begins, while supporters say it could provide an important source of critical minerals.

In a budgetary document released in April 2026, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) indicated it intends to hold at least three offshore lease sales during the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years. The lease sales will take place through competitive auctions, providing a pathway for winning companies to gain exclusive rights to explore and exploit minerals in designated tracts of seabed.

The first sale is slated for the federal waters of American Samoa in August 2026; a second in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) in November 2026; and a third in Alaska in 2027. A spokesperson for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the U.S. agency currently responsible for the development of offshore energy and mineral resources on the U.S. outer continental shelf (OCS), confirmed this timeline.

Read the full article at Mongabay

MASSACHUSETTS: Nearly Two Years Later, Broken Blade Investigation Continues

May 7, 2026 — As Vineyard Wind and its turbine manufacturer duke it out in court over hundreds of millions owed to both parties, a federal investigation into what caused the blade failure at the heart of the case remains ongoing nearly two years later.

Last month a Massachusetts superior court judge issued a preliminary injunction that prevented GE Vernova, the company that built and installed several dozen faulty turbine blades at the offshore wind energy project off Martha’s Vineyard, from walking away from its work at the wind farm.

The case hinges on contract language related to who owes who money. GE Vernova said it wanted to exit from its contracts because it was owed more than $300 million. Vineyard Wind said that it didn’t have to pay any money to GE, because the GE owed Vineyard Wind nearly $800 million because of the delays from the shoddy work.

While that continues to play out in court, the long-awaited investigation into the 2024 blade break at Vineyard Wind by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the agency that oversees offshore energy production, continues on with no clear end date.

The bureau itself has been tight-lipped and declined to give a progress report on its work and any of the environmental monitoring that the bureau required of Vineyard Wind.

Read the full article at Vineyard Gazzette

Court Says Sunrise Wind Can Resume

May 4, 2026 — President Trump’s effort to kill the nascent offshore wind industry is starting to resemble his fruitless effort to overturn his re-election loss in 2020, as a federal judge on Monday handed him a fifth consecutive loss in court challenges to the administration’s December order pausing construction of five wind farms along the East Coast.

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted the preliminary injunction sought by Sunrise Wind L.L.C., regarding the suspension order issued by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The move allows the construction of Sunrise Wind in federal waters about 30 miles east of Montauk Point to resume immediately while the underlying lawsuit challenging the administration’s order progresses.

The 924-megawatt wind farm’s export cable is to make landfall at Smith Point County Park in Shirley and is to generate electricity sufficient to power nearly 600,000 residences.

“Sunrise Wind will determine how it may be possible to work with the U.S. administration to achieve an expeditious and durable resolution,” a statement from Orsted, the developer, reads. “With safety as the top priority, the project will resume impacted construction work as soon as possible to deliver affordable, reliable power to the State of New York.”

Read the full article at the East Hampton Star

Trump administration to rejoin offshore drilling agencies separated after 2010 Gulf oil spill

April 6, 2026 — The Trump administration said Friday it is combining two agencies that were separated in the aftermath of the 2010 Gulf oil spill. The Interior Department said the overhaul would increase efficiency and speed up permitting for offshore oil and gas drilling.

The new Marine Minerals Administration will bring together the functions of the current Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said. Doing so will enable a “streamlined approach” that will maintain existing regulatory protections and rigorous safety standards, he said.

The combined agency will “deliver clearer coordination, better service to the public and stronger, more integrated oversight of offshore energy development,” Burgum said in a statement.

The new name is reminiscent of the old Minerals Management Service, which for decades was the federal agency responsible for overseeing offshore drilling. In April 2010, a deadly explosion destroyed BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and discharging nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil into the sea over the next three months in the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

ALASKA: Trump’s High-Profile Oil and Gas Lease Sale in Alaska Has No Takers

March 9 2026 — The Trump administration did not receive a single bid for its offer of new offshore oil and gas exploration opportunities in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, dealing a blow to President Trump’s ‘drill, baby drill,’ agenda.

The attempted sale of rights to drill in more than 1 million acres was the first of six offshore oil and gas auctions in Alaska that Republicans mandated last year when they passed Mr. Trump’s sweeping tax law.

It was seen as a key test of the industry’s appetite for investment in a state that Mr. Trump has called a “natural resource warehouse,” and essential for his “energy dominance” agenda of maximizing domestic production of oil, natural gas and coal. On Wednesday, though, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management acknowledged that no drilling companies submitted bids.

“This is a huge embarrassment for Trump’s Alaska fossil fuel fantasy,” said Cooper Freeman, the Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group.

Read the full article at The New York Times

CALIFORNIA: Next Step in Trump’s California Offshore Oil Drilling Effort Announced

February 27, 2026 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced a step toward leasing areas for offshore oil and gas drilling in California this week, by launching an associated environmental process.

BOEM announced Thursday the department would prepare a programmatic environmental impact statement for lease sales in northern, central and southern California.

A soon-to-be-released statement will primarily concern sales planned for 2027 in central and southern California, according to BOEM.

A Northern California lease sale is proposed for 2029, according to a BOEM document.

This is a California-specific part of a broader effort by the Trump Administration to open lease areas in federal waters across the country for sale to oil and gas companies, with an aim to restore domestic energy production.

Read the full article at the Local Coast Outpost