Just four companies remain after the conclusion of Thursday’s auction for three new Massachusetts lease areas currently priced at a combined $285m.
The BOEM auction for these areas, which could supply 4GW of offshore wind power, will continue Friday morning until one company fails to make a bid on any of the three leases.
After 24 rounds of bidding by 11 companies, lease zone one received two bids for $93m and zone two received two bids for $91m.
Zone three received no bids on the $101m price tag set by BOEM, the first time any lease did not receive at least one bid Thursday.
The combined total of $285m has already dwarfed the previous BOEM auction record of $25.5m for New York lease areas sold in 2016.
Of the 19 companies qualified to bid, including Avangrid Renewables, Norwegian company Equinor and Orsted-acquired Deepwater Wind, 11 of them placed bids at the start of the auction.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management set prices of roughly $250,000 for the first round of the auction, which saw bids rise to $2m in less than an hour.
The auction consists of a series of rounds. During each round, companies can choose to pay the new price tag or drop out of consideration.
Nineteen companies from Europe and the US are qualified to bid on the leases, but BOEM will not release the names of specific companies bidding on the leases until the conclusion of the auction.
Each lease area contains about 53,000 hectares, and lies directly southeast of areas already leased to Vineyard Wind and Bay State Wind.
This auction is slightly different because the three leases are auctioned simultaneously and companies have the option to bid on any of the leases during each round.
“This auction will have different dynamics than we’ve had in previous auctions,” a BOEM spokesperson said.
The other companies able to compete in the auction are Camellia Wind Energy, Blue Cloud Wind Energy, Cobra Industrial Services, East Wind, EC&R Developments, EDF Renewables, EDPR Offshore North America, Enbridge Holdings (Green Energy), Innogy US Renewable Projects, Mayflower Wind Energy, Northeast Wind Energy, Northland Power America, PNE Wind USA, Vineyard Wind, Wind Future and WPD Offshore Alpha.