By – Owen Klinsky
European energy company BP has announced plans to sell its U.S. onshore wind business as it aims to concentrate on its core oil and gas business and improve investor sentiment, according to the Financial Times.
BP, along with its rival Shell, has looked to scale back on green initiatives over the past few years, rejecting further cuts to oil production in June 2023. Now, the company is looking to sell its roughly $2 billion U.S. onshore wind portfolio, which consists of stakes in ten operating wind farms and has a total net generating capacity of 1.3 gigawatts, the FT reported.
“We believe the business is likely to be of greater value for another owner,” William Lin, BP’s executive vice president for gas & low carbon energy, told Bloomberg. “This planned divestment is part of our strategy of continuing to simplify our portfolio and focus on value.”
The move comes as BP’s share price sits near a two-year low, and as the company is in the process of “shifting capital away from transition themes and back to the core business,” Biraj Borkhataria, head of European energy research at RBC Europe Ltd XYZ, told Bloomberg. It also comes as the U.S. onshore wind industry has struggled more broadly as installations have slowed due to elevated interest rates and permitting challenges, with BloombergNEF lowering its projections for new onshore wind by 22% through 2030.
BP’s offshore wind (OSW) efforts have also run into challenges, with the company writing down the value of its OSW portfolio by $1.1 billion last year, and the company’s former renewables chief, Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, telling the FT, “offshore wind in the US is fundamentally broken.”
BP’s competitor Shell has also pivoted away from a renewables transition in recent years, with its CEO Wael Sawan describing cutting oil production as “dangerous and irresponsible.”
“I disagree with him, respectfully,” Sawan said in July 2023 in reference to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterrdaes’ comment that new oil and gas investments are “economic and moral madness.” “What would be dangerous and irresponsible is actually cutting out oil and gas production so that the cost of living, as we saw last year, starts to shoot up again.”
The onset of the Russia-Ukraine war in Feb. 2022 drove energy prices skywards, with gas surpassing $5 a gallon in June 2022, up from roughly $1.80 in April 2020, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
BP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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