Commentary: The offshore sector is writing a new chapter

By Erik Milito, President, National Ocean Industries Association

The conversation around American offshore energy has changed sharply, and across multiple fronts at once. Washington has moved past the question of whether to develop the country’s offshore resources. The debate, for now, is how to move fast enough to matter amid disruptions and volatility driven by geopolitical uncertainty.

The untethering of leasing and permitting restraints, a surging ocean minerals sector, and growth in American industrial and port capacity have converged to create a rare opportunity for investment in coastal and offshore infrastructure and resource development. The offshore industry hasn’t seen a policy opening this broad in a long time.

Start with oil and gas, because that has been the foundation of the America’s offshore energy industry for decades. Deepwater projects run on long timelines and patient capital. An operator sanctioning a project today is making a bet that will play out over a decade, factoring in market forces such as costs and prices, technology, and the regulatory environment.

In recent years, US leasing schedules and lease sales became too uncertain due to partisan political whiplash. The schedules were too uncertain to support the requisite planning needed by investors, operators, suppliers, vendors and engineering/construction firms. A stable, long-term leasing framework changes that calculus.

When the schedule is predictable, capital follows, facilities and tiebacks get sanctioned, and the Gulf of America’s installed base, which is one of the most capable offshore ecosystems on the planet, keeps expanding its value and capabilities.

The US has significant ocean mineral assets and is only now demonstrating the leadership to secure them. Cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper, and other critical or rare earths are embedded in defense systems, semiconductors, batteries, and advanced manufacturing. China dominates large portions of the global supply chain for these materials and is actively working to extend that reach into international seabed governance.

The offshore industry doesn't need to build a new sector from scratch to respond. Seabed mapping, subsea robotics, geophysical surveying, remotely operated systems—these are capabilities the American offshore energy sector already has. Recent federal initiatives, including NOAA's updated regulatory framework and the administration's Project Vault critical minerals reserve, are early signals that Washington has recognized the stakes, especially with Chinese dominance looming large. The industry can move when the policy framework holds.

Offshore wind has had a difficult few years. Project economics have been difficult, permitting has been halted, and several high-profile developments have stalled or been cancelled. But the infrastructure the sector has built onshore during the same period should not be overlooked. Ports along the Atlantic seaboard now have expanded heavy-lift capacity and are marshalling infrastructure they did not have a decade ago. American shipyards are producing specialized vessels. Workforce training programs have taken root. And, despite federal policy resistance, additional power is flowing to coastal communities.

That industrial capability exists regardless of what happens to any individual project, and it strengthens the country’s broader offshore posture, for wind, but also for energy, minerals, and carbon management as those sectors scale.

Carbon capture deserves more attention than it gets in the conversation. The Gulf Coast has three things almost nowhere else can offer at scale: geological storage capacity beneath the seabed, concentrated industrial CO₂ emissions onshore, and a mature offshore industry that already knows how to design wells, manage subsea infrastructure, and monitor long-term asset performance. The permitting framework still needs to happen, but the conversation is moving.

What's less discussed is how broadly the offshore infrastructure base is being put to new uses entirely. Offshore hydrogen production is drawing serious engineering attention as a way to site electrolysis capacity near offshore wind generation and move hydrogen to shore through existing pipeline corridors. It's early, but the industrial logic is sound and the Gulf is well positioned to be where it develops.

Then there is something that would have sounded like science fiction in previous years: offshore spaceports. Bollinger Shipyards, a Louisiana institution with nearly eight decades of building vessels for commercial, government, and military customers, recently took a contract to convert a barge into a rocket landing platform for Rocket Lab, to be deployed off the Virginia coast near Rocket Lab's launch site. A Gulf Coast shipyard, building offshore infrastructure, for the commercial space industry. The Outer Continental Shelf is becoming a platform for ambitions that go well beyond the waterline.

Taken together, these aren't separate energy policy debates. They're different expressions of the same underlying question: how well is the United States managing its offshore estate? The Outer Continental Shelf covers more than three billion acres of federal waters. Few national assets of that scale are as underused, particularly when compared to global offshore investment. Getting the framework right, meaning stable leasing, efficient permitting, multi-use management that lets different sectors operate without unnecessary conflict, is the work in front of policymakers right now.

The offshore industry has spent decades building the technical depth, workforce, and operational culture to deliver across all of it. What it needs now from Washington is the consistency to invest, plan, build, and produce.