BP efforts to scale back renewables won’t affect JV with EnBW

This content was published on November 12, 2024 - 15:18

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FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Current efforts by BP to scale back its renewables activities have no impact on an offshore wind joint venture the oil major has with EnBW, the German utility’s finance chief told analysts on Tuesday.

Both companies formed a 50:50 partnership in 2021 to jointly develop offshore wind projects in Britain, where they hold agreements for lease on two 60-year leases in the Irish Sea as well as an option agreement for another lease in the North Sea.

The three projects, dubbed Morven, Morgan and Mona, cover potential generation capacity of 5.9 gigawatts, enough to power around 6 million UK households.

Sources told Reuters last month that BP was considering selling a minority stake in its offshore wind business, the latest effort by CEO Murray Auchincloss to scale back the energy company’s focus on renewables.

“We are in close contact with BP and we do not see any impact of their intentions to scale down their overall renewables business, because it’s not on the level of our JV,” EnBW CFO Thomas Kusterer said after presenting nine-month results.

“If they were to do something, that’s at least my understanding, it’s on a … global level and not on a JV level,” he added. “What we are hearing from them in our JV (is that) we are progressing well with the project and we do not see any kind of impact on an operational level.”