August 23, 2022 — The Gulf of Mexico offshore oil industry will be critical in helping its frequent nemesis President Joe Biden achieve one of his most obtainable climate ambitions: raising wind farms in the ocean.
Welders and machinists from Louisiana and Texas are building the nation’s first offshore wind supply vessels and turbine installation ships. Jack-up vessel crews helped plant the first of thousands of turbines in the Atlantic Ocean and hope to raise more. Oil companies, with their decades of experience launching projects at sea, are expected to be at the front of the line when the Interior Department conducts the first lease sale for wind in the Gulf of Mexico next year.
But locals in the ports across south Louisiana are quick to point out the region isn’t ready to ditch its rigs. If anything, the embrace of offshore wind showcases a Gulf oil sector that remains mostly confident in the face of the energy transition.
“When wind energy comes to Louisiana, I think Louisiana will open their arms and say, ‘Yeah, come on, let’s do it,’” said Tommy Brown with Aries Marine Corp., one of the oil services companies that supplied lift boats and operators that helped build the first offshore wind farm in the country in Rhode Island in 2015. “[But] people need to understand that, look, you can’t just flip a switch and go from oil and gas to renewables.”
That sentiment is common across the Gulf Coast. The region demonstrates perhaps more than anywhere else in the country the entrenchment of the fossil fuel industry, even as the Biden administration tries to drive an energy transformation that includes a commitment to approve 16 offshore wind arrays by 2030 to help decarbonize the grid by 2035.
In Louisiana, offshore wind could provide new jobs for workers laid off by an oil sector that becomes more efficient through each price bust, and it is poised to inject adrenaline into the shipbuilding industry. Long term, wind may even become a strong, albeit smaller, industry with its own workforce of wind technicians and manufacturers along the Gulf Coast, pushing clean power onto the grid.