石油巨头的海上风能之旅才刚刚开始

据3月18日伍德麦肯兹官网报道，石油巨头只有用大动作才能产生较大的影响，因为如果任何新的战略地位要对其庞大的投资组合产生实质性影响，那么它必须这么做。而海上风力发电是欧洲各大石油巨头正在关注的重要新事物，它是一种“可以随时投入使用”的零碳技术，具有巨大的增长前景。就在本周，英国石油(BP)和道达尔(Total)在最新一轮英国海上风电租赁中发起了引人注目的竞标。

但如今，海上风能市场仍然很小。它能满足众多想要参与进来的能源公司的巨大需求吗?海上风能研究主管S?ren Lassen和企业研究主管诺曼瓦伦丁表示，他们即将发布各大巨头海上风电战略的第一份基准分析报告。

未来的机会是什么?

未来几十年，产能增长将是巨大的。目前，海上风力发电仅为35吉瓦，仅占全球风力发电量的6%，其中大部分是陆上风力发电。但最近的技术进步——更大的涡轮机，更高的容量因数，浮式涡轮机等，已经让海上风力发电的规模达到了顶峰。预测，到2030年，全球装机容量将超过200吉瓦。现有的成熟市场都在北欧和中国，下一波浪潮——美国、欧洲亚洲其它地方的海上风电潮流才刚刚开始。

大型石油公司的参与会带来什么?

这些投资完全符合大型石油公司在海上开发方面的技能组合，存在运营协同效应，间歇性的可再生能源(通常根据电力购买协议定价)为能源交易增加了另一个维度。除了财力雄厚，大型企业还可以利用自己的国际影响力来进入新市场，这是它们相对于以本地为重点的公用事业公司的优势。假以时日，海上风电投资组合可能会像今天的上游油气投资组合一样实现全球化。

目前有什么进展?

欧元区主要国家的运营能力仅为0.7吉瓦，占中国以外地区总容量的3%。但它们肩负着一项使命，在2020年完成最终投资决定的9吉瓦中，他们已经获得了30%的份额。不仅在发展，而且也在逐渐成熟，前期开发项目正处于不同阶段。此外，它还将在不同的地理位置和技术上实现多样化——例如，欧洲主要国家正在较早地进军海上浮式风电领域。

规模会达到多大?

欧元区大型石油公司们（不包括壳牌）的可再生能源目标是，到2030年，包括太阳能和陆上风电在内的可再生能源发电量达到125吉瓦，是目前海上风电发电量的6倍。如果它们在新项目中保持30%的市场份额，那么根据对2029年海上风电装机容量为200吉瓦的预测，将获得60吉瓦的装机容量。在我们看来，这是一个相当远大的目标。

资产价格正在受到挤压吗?

人们担心的是，供应根本不足以满足欧元区能源巨头们进入市场所引发的需求。本周的英国第四轮租赁拍卖（LR4）显示了大型石油公司的积极性——英国石油公司/英格兰国家石油公司（BP/EnBW）以18亿英镑的价格竞购3吉瓦的爱尔兰海上项目（四年内的总期权费），这一价格大约是其他中标价格的两倍。道达尔成功投资了1.5吉瓦的风电项目。按净额计算，英国石油公司（19%）和道达尔公司（9%）几乎占拟议租赁产能的30%。

许多因素使得英国LR4极具吸引力:该地区是领先的海上风电市场，也是最大的几个项目之一。所有的条款都提供了60年的租约(两个涡轮机使用周期)，以及开发商首选的定价机制(低风险，政府支持的差价合同)。BP/EnBW的爱尔兰海域在离岸距离、水深和预计许可程序方面具有优势。

大公司是否花了太多钱来进入风电市场?

必须参与其中才能赢得比赛。有全球野心的海上风电开发商需要有资格参加未来世界任何地方的投标并与之合作。

然而，孤立地看，预先支付一大笔投入，将使这些巨头更难从可再生能源领域实现两位数的回报目标。开发商必须确保项目交付、执行、资本和运营支出方面的纪律；任何协同效应，无论是贸易、金融还是税收，都是最大化的。相关模型表明，较高的个位数回报仍然是可以实现的。

随着大型石油公司向包括海上风能在内的新能源领域投入越来越多的资金，与任何新业务的收购或多元化投资一样，大型石油公司需要持续且清晰地阐明其价值主张。

海上风电在新能源战略中的地位如何?

海上风电项目是欧元区的核心投资选择之一。大多数巨头同时建设太阳能和陆上风电，但海上风电项目规模更大，容量系数更高。Equinor的目标是成为一家“海上风电巨头”，专注于成为一流的运营商，要知道它已经是全球领先的石油巨头，净股本容量为12吉瓦，超过其他公司的总和。但其他能源巨头正在努力追赶。尤其是英国石油公司和道达尔在这项技术上的赌注越来越大。壳牌更注重客户——它将海上风电视为其整合价值链的一部分，为客户提供低碳能源。

海上风电将是零碳投资组合的核心部分，其中将包括碳捕获和能源存储。它还将在绿色氢气等发电技术的商业化方面发挥核心作用。

下一个大的招标项目在哪里?

在英国LR4、Equinor和英国石油公司在纽约的2.5吉瓦的招标中获得成功后，2021年还会有更多的项目。预计，欧洲(英国、波兰、荷兰、丹麦)、日本和美国的招标容量将超过23吉瓦，几乎与中国以外地区目前已经上线的新产能相当。除此之外，今年还将获得15吉瓦的租赁面积。希望大公司们可以参与其中的大部分项目。

王佳晶 摘译自 伍德麦肯兹官网

原文如下：

Big Oil’s offshore wind journey is only just beginning

Big Oil always goes in big. It has to, if any new strategic position is to make a material impact on its massive portfolios. And offshore wind is the big new thing the European Majors are seizing upon, an ‘oven-ready’ zero-carbon technology with big growth prospects. Just this week, BP and Total made headline-grabbing bids in the latest UK offshore wind lease round.

But today offshore wind is still a tiny market. Can it feed the voracious appetites of the multitude of energy companies wanting to get in on the action? I asked S?ren Lassen, Head of Offshore Wind Research, and Norman Valentine, Director Corporate Research, who are about to release our first benchmarking analysis of the Majors’ strategies for offshore wind.

What’s the opportunity?

Capacity growth is going to be huge and sustained over decades. Offshore wind is niche today at 35 GW, just 6% of global wind capacity, most of which is onshore. But recent technology advances – bigger turbines, higher capacity factors, floating turbines – have got offshore wind to the cusp of scaling up. We forecast global installed capacity will exceed 200 GW by 2030. The established markets are all in northern Europe and China, the next wave – US, elsewhere in Europe and Asia – is just opening up.

What do the Majors bring to the party?

The developments fit neatly into Big Oil’s skill set in offshore development, there are operational synergies and the intermittent renewables power (typically priced on power purchase agreements) adds another dimension to energy trading. Besides financial muscle, the Majors can leverage their international footprint to access new markets, an advantage over local-focused utilities. In time, offshore wind portfolios may be as global as upstream oil and gas is today.

What’s the progress so far?

Coming a little late to the party, the Euro Majors’ operational capacity is just 0.7 GW, 3% of the global total outside China. But they are on a mission and have secured 30% of the 9 GW that achieved final investment decisions in 2020. The pipeline’s not just growing but also maturing, with pre-development projects at different stages. It’s also diversifying across geographies and technologies – for instance, the Euro Majors are pushing early into floating offshore wind.

How big do they want to be?

The ambition is stratospheric. The Euro Majors (excluding Shell) have a target for renewables, including solar and onshore wind of 125 GW by 2030 – six times their present offshore wind pipeline exposure. If they maintain their recent market share of 30% in new projects, then that would give them 60 GW, based on our forecast for installed offshore wind capacity in 2029 of 200 GW. It’s quite a tall order in our view.

Are asset prices being squeezed?

The concern is that there’s simply not enough supply to meet the demand fuelled by the arrival of the Euro Majors into the market. This week’s UK Round 4 lease auction (LR4) showed how aggressive Big Oil can be – the winning Irish Sea bid from BP/EnBW for 3 GW of ￡1.8 billion (total option fees over four years, more if delayed, in payments to the UK Crown Estate) was roughly double those of the other winning bids. Total was the other successful Euro Major (with investor GIG) for 1.5 GW. On a net basis, BP (19%) and Total (9%) accounted for almost 30% of the proposed capacity awarded.

A host of factors made the UK LR4 highly attractive: it’s the leading offshore wind market and project scale is among the biggest. The terms all offered 60-year leases (long enough for two turbine life cycles and much longer than the longest-life accessible oil and gas projects) with the developers’ preferred pricing mechanism (low risk, government-backed contracts-for-difference). BP/EnBW’s Irish Sea sites have advantages in proximity to shore, water depth and expected permitting process.

Are the Majors paying too much to get in?

You have to be in it to win it. Offshore wind developers with global ambitions need credentials to participate and partner in future tenders anywhere in the world.

Yet looked at in isolation, paying a big option fee upfront will make it harder to achieve the double-digit returns the Euro Majors aim for from renewables. To claw back the 300 bp to 500 bp effective cost in option fees, developers will have to ensure discipline on project delivery, execution, capital and operating expenditure; and that any synergies whether trading, finance or tax are maximised. Our modelling suggests project returns in high single digits are still achievable.

As with any acquisition or diversification into a new activity, Big Oil will need to continuously and clearly articulate the value proposition as it commits increasingly large amounts of capital into new energy, including offshore wind.

Where does offshore wind fit in new energy strategies?

It’s one of a number of core options where the Euro Majors are gaining exposure. Most are simultaneously building out solar and onshore wind; but offshore wind has bigger project scale and higher capacity factors. Equinor aims to be an “offshore wind Major”, focused on being the best-in-class operator – it’s already the leading oil Major with net equity capacity of 12 GW, more than the rest put together. But the others are working hard to catch up. BP and Total, in particular, are placing increasingly bigger bets on the technology. Shell is more customer focused – it sees offshore wind as part of its integrated value chain that supplies low-carbon energy to its customers.

Offshore wind will be a core part of integrated zero-carbon portfolios, which will include carbon capture and energy storage. It will also have a central role to play in commercialising power-to-X technologies like green hydrogen.

Where are the next big tenders?

After UK LR4 and Equinor and BP’s success in the 2.5 GW New York tender, there’s a lot more to come in 2021. We expect more than 23 GW to be up for tender in Europe (UK, Poland, Netherlands, Denmark), Japan and the US, almost as much new capacity as is already online outside China today. On top of that, there is another 15 GW of lease acreage to be awarded this year. We expect the Majors to participate in most of these.