"It's a win-win for anything in the Gulf for us." – Harris Cheramie, President Lafourche Port Commission.
Despite the curtailing of oil rig leases in the Gulf, Port Fourchon continues to build, service, and serve as home base for the many deep-water oil rigs that work everyday to bring energy home to the shore.
Now, it appears a new energy source is about to take place in the Gulf.
The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has released the first of its kind Draft Environmental Assessment of a series of lease sites grouped in two major areas offshore.
One is a field off Galveston; the other is in deep water off Port Fourchon.
The BOEM is seeking public comment on the pair of Wind Energy Areas (WEA) over the next thirty days.
Much like oil and gas drilling, lease sites for acreage on the water will be put up for bid to energy developers looking to establish floating wind turbines at sea to generate electricity.
The one WEA closest to Louisiana is 188,023 acres in size and has the potential to power nearly 800,000 homes when fully built out and generating.
This is big news for Port Fourchon. "90% of the deep water rigs are out of Fourchon," Says Harris Cheramie, President of the Lafourche Port Commission. "And I think Fourchon is the number one place at the coast and on the Gulf anywhere."
The port is already the home base for most oil rig activity and servicing in the Gulf. Being a new home base for wind turbine development, construction and proliferation means a lot more activity is coming to the Port.
"So anything, whether it's wind or natural gas or oil, anything that comes Port Fourchon way gives economic development to our port and our community is a win-win situation for us all the time," Cheramie says.
When the time comes, Port Fourchon will likely be the main servicing facility for the windmill platforms the same as it does for the oil rigs already at work in the Gulf.
"The oil all comes through the port. Most of the rigs are serviced out of Port Fourchon, so if they do set up the windmills they'll go ahead and hopefully do everything out of Fourchon to service these windmills when and if it happens."
According to Cheramie, two companies in Port Fourchon are already gearing up for the opening of wind farm leases and readying to construct windmills and platforms for use in electricity generation.
"There's a couple of tugboat companies. [Edison] Chouest Offshore is one that's digging in deep into the wind right now. We got boats that service that are gearing up now for a couple of other companies that are doing the same thing, so be on the lookout for that!"
