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California’s Port San Luis, a smaller central coast port used by commercial fishermen as well as recreational and tourist boating, is launching an exploration to become the first operations and maintenance (O&M) port for the planned California offshore wind industry. The Harbor District’s Board approved a port evaluation project working with Clean Energy Terminals, a company that was involved in O&M port planning including for the New Jersey Wind Port.<\/p>\n
Port officials are citing recent studies and public feedback that suggest that larger offshore wind-related port facilities, such as the staging and integration ports under development to the north in Humboldt Bay or the south in Long Beach are not well-suited to the Central Coast. They are saying that instead smaller facilities such as O&M ports, which are typically no more than five acres, and support vessels that come into port approximately once every other week could be a good fit for the region. <\/p>\n
Further, the State of California’s Ports Readiness Plan released in July 2023 identified Port San Luis as a high-potential area for an O&M port facility. It is located close to Morro Bay the planned site for some of California’s offshore first wind turbines. It has a good natural harbor with a heritage of supporting the oil and gas industry.<\/p>\n
California has set goals to deploy 2 to 5 GW of offshore wind by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045. As part of this, state officials have estimated that $11 to $12 billion is required to upgrade port facilities. Across the United States, estimates have said that as many as 100 port facilities will be required for the offshore wind industry.<\/p>\n
Looking to tap into the potential for investment and long-term employment opportunities, the port and CET signed a project evaluation agreement which sets the groundwork for the two entities to jointly evaluate the technical and commercial feasibility of an offshore wind O&M port facility in San Luis Obispo Bay. Project evaluation is expected to take between six and 18 months, with development of an O&M facility taking six to eight years in total, subject to permitting and the timing of California's offshore wind projects.<\/p>\n
"Today's announcement is Day 1 of a thoughtful and thorough evaluation of the feasibility of an O&M port in San Luis Obispo Bay, and if feasible, what a facility could look and feel like," said Port San Luis Harbor Commission President, Bob Vessely.<\/p>\n
If an O&M facility is found to be feasible, the Agreement also sets out a pathway for parties to negotiate a lease option and subsequent long-term lease for the project's development and operations. They are hopeful that this project could lead to a long-term lease agreement starting a new industry in the region.
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California’s Port San Luis, a smaller central coast port used by commercial fishermen as well as recreational and tourist boating, is launching an exploration to become the first operations and maintenance (O&M) port for the planned California offshore wind industry. The Harbor District’s Board approved a port evaluation project working with Clean Energy Terminals, a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[4489,2825,10629,21499,21502,5079,21500,21497,21503,21501,1131,953,2939,21498,1872],"class_list":["post-46458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-bay","tag-california","tag-californias","tag-cet","tag-evaluated","tag-explore","tag-luis","tag-om","tag-oampampm","tag-obispo","tag-offshore","tag-port","tag-san","tag-san-luis","tag-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/46459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}