Norway’s Equinor is assured of discovering an investor for its deliberate Empire Wind 1 offshore wind farm in New York after a brand new energy off-take settlement improved the challenge’s economics, the corporate mentioned on Thursday.
New York State authorities in February awarded the challenge a brand new conditional energy buy contract, changing a earlier deal that was not aggressive as a consequence of rising development prices, greater rates of interest and provide chain snags.
Equinor was glad to have obtained the brand new contract, which considerably modified the economics of the challenge, CFO Torgrim Reitan instructed analysts throughout an earnings name on Thursday.
“2024 is the year of de-risking for the Empire Wind 1 project in New York and we are progressing,” he mentioned.
The firm plans to promote a stake as a part of a so-called farm all the way down to a brand new associate to scale back capital expenditure, with Reitan saying there was “a broad set of potential interested parties.”
It would mark the second farm down for Empire Wind 1, after Equinor earlier this yr parted methods with its earlier associate BP.
Equinor will reveal the worth of its new contract with New York as soon as it’s firmly signed, with solely a mean for a number of awarded initiatives given in February, the CFO mentioned.
All vital procurement contract have been roughly settled for the challenge, nonetheless, with little or no remaining publicity to inflation, he added.
Equinor has opted for 15-megawatt (MW) Vestas VWS.CO wind generators for the challenge, a confirmed expertise, Reitan mentioned.
“We feel confident in the delivery of that,” he added.
Reitan’s remark adopted information final week that New York had rejected contracts for 3 different initiatives that had been hoping to utilise 18-MW wind generators, because the chosen producer, GE Vernova, had determined to not produce these generators.
(Reuters – Reporting by Nora Buli, enhancing by Terje Solsvik)
