WEST LONG BRANCH - Offshore wind farms dotting the Atlantic Ocean are moving further into the future as the federal government gets ready to launch its plans for regulating such projects across the country.

Officials from the Minerals Management Service, the government agency that oversees wind farms, hydrokinetic power and other offshore renewable energy projects, fielded questions from wind farm developers, environmentalists and other stakeholders about the projects during a public workshop Thursday at Monmouth University.

The framework for how companies can develop offshore energy projects other than oil and natural gas is scheduled to be unveiled later this month. Once the plan is in place, wind-farm developers who have waited since last year to begin moving forward with their projects can apply for leases.

The first step toward getting a wind farm under way is constructing a meteorological tower. The towers analyze wind and weather patterns and determine the best locations for potential wind farms.

But before towers can be built, a number of studies about the ocean and its inhabitants have to be done.

Even if studies by federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are commissioned in July, the three wind-power companies that have proposed projects for New Jersey - Bluewater Wind, Fishermen's Energy and Garden State Offshore Energy - will likely have to wait until 2010 before building the towers.

"Because things are moving this slowly, it looks like we'll be building next year," said Dan Cohen, president of Fishermen's Energy.

Cohen said he expects his company to begin construction of its 350-megawatt wind farm in 2013. That would be enough energy to power about 125,00 homes in New Jersey.

In 2008, Gov. Jon S. Corzine outlined a plan to have 1,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy being generated by 2012. Cohen does not think any company can meet that goal at this point.

A lot of wind energy companies are interested in New Jersey's wind power potential, which ranked among the greatest in the country. In Thursday's workshop, MMS officials said they plan to have a competitive leasing process if more than one company is interested in the same area.

That has some of the wind-energy companies concerned. Even if a company chooses to build on an area of the outer continental shelf that no one else is interested in, the MMS publicly notifies everyone of the selected area.

Once that information is public, some companies are concerned that another company looking to lay claim to desirable space could create competition for the area.

"Keeping people from waiting in the wings and jumping in at the last second, that's in everybody's interest," said Rob Gibbs, manager of energy renewables development for PSEG Global, one of the partners in the Garden State Offshore Energy Project.

The MMS said that in order to get plans through the door, a company has to prove it has the financing and the technology to move ahead. But Gibbs said the MMS's standards for who gets selected may not be stringent enough.

Another concern involved studies of the ocean and the species it contains. New Jersey has already conducted a baseline study of the ecology of the Atlantic Ocean, but with several government agencies beyond the MMS involved in looking at the data, it may be difficult to have a uniform standard that state and federal governments follow when collecting data on the ocean.

That was the main concern of Heather Saffert, a scientist with the environmental group Clean Ocean Action who attended the workshop. The MMS' plan is a good start, Saffert said, but could be better.

"We'd still like to see it be more comprehensive than it is," Saffert said.

Saffert said the United States should take its cue from the European Union and create an independent agency that collects and analyzes all the necessary data.

The MMS wants to be especially careful before a single offshore wind turbine goes up. Commercial leases can last for 25 years, but companies have to put aside the money to decommission an offshore project in the event that it fails or that the company that operates it goes bankrupt.

Once those 25-year leases expire, a wind farm or other project could be renewed.

The MMS' final plan goes into effect June 29.

For more information regarding the MMS and its offshore renewable energy program, visit: www.mms.gov/offshore/