Oil giant BP (LON: BP) has formed a joint venture with Deep Wind Offshore to develop offshore wind opportunities in South Korea.
As part of their agreement, the London-listed supermajor has acquired a 55% stake in Deep Wind Offshore’s early-stage portfolio, which includes four projects across the Korean peninsula with a potential generating capacity of up to 6 gigawatts (GW).
South Korea is targeting almost 22% of its energy to come from renewable sources by 2030, and is expected to become a leading offshore wind region.
The joint venture opens up the South Korean offshore wind market to BP, through Deep Wind Offshore’s existing presence in the region.
BP’s history in the country dates back 40 years, including sizeable oil and LNG trading activities and its Castrol lubricants business.
Matthias Bausenwein, BP’s senior vice president of offshore wind, said: “South Korea is an exceptional market to expand our growing offshore wind footprint. We are very happy to be working with a partner as strong as Deep Wind Offshore, which has managed to build a strong local team and develop these projects in collaboration with a variety of Korean stakeholders. We look forward to developing these gigawatts further so we can integrate these electrons in the wider energy system and help the global and South Korean energy transition.
Knut Vassbotn, Deep Wind Offshore’s chief executive, said: “We are extremely excited about partnering with bp to help realize our quality portfolio of projects in South Korea. There is a great fit between our highly competent development team and the bp execution capabilities. We look forward to integrating our teams to realize the projects in a sustainable manner, in close collaboration with local stakeholders to bring both clean electricity to the country and opportunities to local supply chain and communities.”
The permitting process for Deep Wind Offshore’s four projects is already underway having installed wind measurement devices during 2021 and 2022.
BP and Deep Wind Offshore will now look to install additional wind measurement systems and secure electricity business licenses in the coming months.
In its bid to become an integrated energy company, BP has been steadily growing its offshore wind portfolio.
In the US, the group has operating onshore assets with a generating capacity totalling 1.7GW, while it also has an offshore pipeline of 5.2GW.
Alongside EnBW, BP is developing the Morgan and Mona projects in the Irish Sea and Morven in the North Sea off Scotland – together, the projects have potential gross generating capacity of around 6GW.
Deep Wind Offshore is an international developer and owner of offshore wind projects, with headquarters in Norway and offices in Sweden and Korea and projects under development in numerous other markets.
In Norway, Deep Wind Offshore is developing Utsira Nord and Sorlige Nordsjø II together with EDF Renewables. The company is backed by industrial owners Knutsen Group, Haugaland Kraft and SKL from the shipping/offshore and utility sectors.
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