Norwegian seismic company TGS has finished the acquisition of an ultra-high-resolution 3D (UHRD3D) survey on behalf of Community Offshore Wind in the New York Bight, providing soil condition data to guide the design of the offshore wind project.
According to TGS, the survey began in October 2023 and had a total duration of more than eight months. The lease area, won by a joint venture (JV) between RWE and National Grid Ventures during the 2022 U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) auction, holds the potential to support up to 3 GW of clean energy capacity.
The seismic firm noted that the JV secured the largest parcel in the competitive lease sale off the New York and New Jersey coasts. Using the vessel Sanco Swift , the company conducted the survey over the entire lease area, offering more detailed geological data than traditional 2D surveys. This marks TGS’s second offshore wind site characterization project.
Doug Perkins , President and Project Director of Community Offshore Wind, commented: “Community Offshore Wind is using the latest technology to study how the soil behaves in our lease area, so that we can engineer our project effectively and in a way that’s environmentally friendly.”
“We are building a project that is going to generate clean energy for communities in the US Northeast for roughly 30 years, so precision is key for building a project of this scale. The data acquired from the survey allows to plan with more precision and certainty than ever before.”
In the New York Bight auction, RWE and National Grid Ventures secured the OCS-A 0539 lease area with a winning bid of $1.1 billion. The project has the potential to support up to 3 GW of offshore wind capacity that could power approximately 1.1 million homes and businesses, which is more than double the base scenario estimate provided by BOEM.
Community Offshore Wind began its geophysical survey campaign in the New York Bight in January 2023. In July 2024, the company selected Fugro to conduct a geotechnical investigation of the lease area. The project is on track to become operational by the end of the decade.
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“The acquisition of UHR3D seismic over the full lease will provide Community Offshore Wind with a solid foundation to develop their offshore wind farm site in the New York Bight. Our geophysical approach to mapping and understanding the shallow subsurface layers will reduce uncertainty and speed up site characterization,” said Carel Hooijkaas , EVP of New Energy Solutions at TGS. “We have received considerable interest in our solution from pioneering developers, and this high demand has driven our decision to invest in an additional UHR3D streamer set, which will be in operation in a few weeks’ time.”