Representatives from Statoil, an international energy company headquartered in Norway, came to Boothbay last Wednesday to meet with State Representative Bruce MacDonald about a proposed pilot floating wind project 12 miles off the Boothbay coast.

The meeting, a first for Statoil on the Boothbay peninsula, was initi-ated by Statoil to seek Rep. Mac-Donald’s help in identifying the players here - the people they will need to know and engage to shep-herd a pilot floating wind park pro-posal through a multi-layered approval process.

The Norwegians - project manager, Kristen Aarnodt, technical manager, Finn Teller, environmen-tal manager, Peter Greve - and their new environmental consultant from Tetra Tech, Kathleen Miller, met with MacDonald and Boothbay Town Manager Jim Chaousis in an hour-long meeting at the Boothbay Town Office.

Aarnodt set the meeting’s goal from Statoil’s perspective, “Mainly we want to establish the dialog so that you know where we are in the process and you can help identify the steps we need to take, and the discussions we need to have, in this area.”

Of this first meeting, MacDonald said, “I applaud them for seeking local input very early in the process and for taking the initiative to come here. That kind of local outreach will help ensure a long-term successful project.”

Statoil has operations in 34 countries, 20,000 employees worldwide and a current market value in excess of $85 billion, according to the federal lease application. They are the largest energy operator on Norway’s continental shelf and have holdings in oil and gas fields around the globe.

In 2009, Statoil constructed the first floating wind turbine pilot project, called Hywind, in ocean waters off Norway (see Table 1). Following on Hywind’s success, they are now pursuing multiple offshore wind sites, including one in ocean waters 12 nautical miles off this coast.

In October, Statoil applied to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to lease about 22 square nautical miles in the Gulf of Maine for a floating four-turbine pilot project, named Hywind Maine (see map). Hywind Maine’s actual footprint within the lease area is estimated at roughly 3 square nautical miles; its precise location is yet to be determined. If the proposal goes forward, the energy generated would come ashore somewhere along this coastline.

BOEM is now reviewing the company’s financial and technical qualifications. BOEM has also convened an interagency task force, which includes federal and state agencies and local representatives, including Rep. MacDonald.

Before any lease can be granted for this project, there will be in-depth environmental and socioeco-nomic assessments, as well as pub-lic hearings. There will also be dis-cussion of how Maine will benefit from this proposal, in terms of jobs, industry and energy.

Aarnodt emphasizes that the pilot wind farm proposal is far from a certainty and is in an early evaluation stage from both Statoil and BOEM’s perspectives. “The focus this year will be to secure the financial conditions of the project,” said Aarnodt. “That’s the first box we have to check, and then we will be gradually engaging various stakeholders, addressing all as-pects.”

MacDonald stressed, “You want to get accurate information out in some kind of manageable time frame … so that people have the information”
“It’s a balance,” Aarnodt responded. “We are gradually build-ing up communication. As the project gets more certain, we will be ready to go out more proactively.”

Despite Aarnodt’s expressed caution, Statoil’s timeline is opti-mistic, at least by American permit-ting standards (see Table 2). They hope to secure a lease by 2014 and begin construction in 2016. In the meeting, MacDonald suggests that Statoil’s timeline is “aggressive.”

“From the feedback we have, it is a realistic one,” said Aarnodt. “There is a lot of support … to get a pilot park into the water … it’s intended to test the technology and all the aspects.”

MacDonald asked if the electrical cable from the wind park would come ashore in Boothbay Harbor, as previously reported. Aarnodt replied, “We haven’t decided on the landfall yet.”

Greve, Statoil’s environmental manager, noted that there are environmental parameters yet to be considered and Teller added, “We are so far off the coast, we have a fairly good spread where we could land a cable.”

Although Statoil’s reps maintain that Boothbay Harbor is only one option for landfall, an application for a wind-generated energy con-nection at the Boothbay substation to commence in 2016 is listed on the ISO New England Study Re-quest Database. Teller explains that although the underwater cable is fairly large, when it comes onshore it would connect to a land cable within a small, shoreside enclosure. From there, the cable is simply like any other electrical cable and can travel underground or in overhead wires to a power station.

When MacDonald asked for the full extent of Statoil’s wind park plans at the lease site, Aarnodt stressed that the company’s only present focus is the pilot park.

“You wouldn’t be putting up a pilot unless you have some idea that it might grow up to a real grown up project,” MacDonald said.

Aarnodt noted Maine’s ambi-tions for offshore wind and added, “We would hope that the pilot park would open markets in the Gulf of Maine because there are excellent winds here and there’s a capable supply chain … but we see this also as having a purpose of opening wider markets around the U.S. East Coast and worldwide.” She added that the Hywind project off Norway has “already opened minds” to what is possible in floating wind power. Greve noted that even if a commercial park were to follow the pilot park, it might be located elsewhere and would require a whole separate permitting and review process.

Teller states, “In this case, we would try to sort of streamline and optimize the technical concept as much as possible, also the infra-structure … Now we will have a technical demonstration of the enhancements, now with a slightly larger turbine and a slighter shal-lower substructure. We will also want to demonstrate and document the cost savings of doing more than one turbine … These are the sort of things we would like to test.”

“It’s important to emphasize that this technology is brand new and that’s one of the reasons we would like to have a pilot park,” noted Greve.

“It’s learning by doing in a fairly controllable scale,” said Teller, who is keen to provide de-tails on the technical aspects of the project. He added, “The demo we did in 2009 has turned out to be a great success. It is the prototype; it’s the first time anyone had done anything like that … we have used it as a floating test lab … All those tests have gone very well. In 2010-2011, the turbine has provided more energy than any comparable turbine on land … This has really given us the optimism and motiva-tion to go further.” 

MacDonald said there are many questions still unanswered.

“There will, for some time, be a lot of unanswered questions about this project -- questions regarding potential effects to fisheries, birds, bats, marine mammals, marine traffic and navigation,” he said.

“There will be questions about how this Norwegian corporation’s offshore project will benefit Maine, about shoreside facilities, job creation and new industry. It will be up to Statoil to answer those questions and the processes to define the questions and the methods to obtain the answers have begun,” he said.

During the meeting, both Mac-Donald and Chaousis they are hap-py to serve as Statoil’s contacts for coordinating local outreach.

“I’m glad to serve the role of coordinating,” said MacDonald. “I’m very interested in this project succeeding and I will be glad to do what I can.”

Statoil representatives said they plan public meetings in April or May to introduce the proposal to the public.

“By then we will have a better idea of what our plan is and we will have a better sense of what the state has to say and of the BOEM process,” said Miller.