Ocean Winds & Electrobras Offshore Brazil, Venterra Acquires Oceanscan

In this episode, we discuss Ocean Winds and Electrobras' new
partnership to develop offshore wind projects in Brazil, Copenhagen
Infrastructure Partners' strategic alliance with Stiesdal Offshore,
and Venterra Group's acquisition of Oceanscan to strengthen
offshore wind services. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our
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Welcome to Uptime News Flash. Industry news, lightning fast. Your
hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro discuss the latest
deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind
power. News Flash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market
intelligence that generates revenue, visit www. intelstor.com.
Allen Hall: Ocean Winds and Electrobras have announced a new
partnership to develop offshore wind projects in Brazil. The
collaboration, revealed at Brazil's WindPower 2024, combines Ocean
Winds offshore wind development expertise with Electrobras position
as a leader in Latin American energy. Ocean Winds currently manages
about 18. 5 gigawatts of offshore wind projects globally. and has
registered 15 gigawatts of wind projects across multiple Brazilian
states. Now, Phil, OceanWind has been pretty aggressive in hooking
up with other places to develop offshore wind. Brazil makes
imminent sense. Philip Totaro: Well, it does, as long as they get
their act together on how they're going to run their auctions and
how the lease areas that they've identified are actually going to
be kind of tendered out because they've allowed multiple different
organizations to submit bids and, and layouts for, for offshore
wind farms. They're still getting some of their site assessment
data figured out and they don't have any kind of regime established
like they do for onshore wind as far as the, the power offtake
auctions are gonna transpire and, and how that's all gonna work. So
there's, there, it's still kind of a relatively, Immature market
with a huge amount of potential. There's I think something like 140
gigawatts of projects that have been proposed down there at this
point including those by Ocean Winds, which would now presumably
involve Electrobras. So they're hoping to be able to leverage, this
utility power offtake as a means to get their projects hopefully to
the the front of the queue. Joel Saxum: Like Phil said, as long as
they can get some of the regulatory and politics and the PPA stuff
figured out, they're in a good place. Because not only do they have
great wind resources, Brazil knows how to operate in an offshore
environment. They've been doing offshore oil and gas there for
many, many, many years. So, Port facilities, work boats, all those
things exist down there, and as does a mariner economy to boot. So,
they build their own vessels, they do all kinds of great stuff in
Brazil. They'll be able to support the offshore wind market from a
technical and operations standpoint. Easier than some of the
emerging offshore markets will have. Allen Hall: Copenhagen
Infrastructure Partners has formed a strategic alliance with
Stiesdal Offshore, acquiring a minority stake through its
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partnership. Five Fund. The partnership
focuses on driving innovation and cost efficiency in floating
offshore wind technology. Stiesdal Offshore plans to expand its
services from design and development of floating foundations to
becoming a comprehensive provider of floating wind solutions. The
company has developed over 30 specific initiatives aimed at
reducing capital expenditures in floating wind projects. All right,
Phil, this is really interesting because floating wind cost
structure is much higher than fixed bottom offshore wind for sure.
But it looks like Stiesdal is going to actually take a good look at
floating and try to reduce some of the costs, and Copenhagen
Infrastructure Partners joining along with them makes a ton of
sense. Philip Totaro: It does and a little bit of this is, Danes
doing things with other Danes but, The, the good news is this is
kind of a mutually beneficial thing for, for both parties.
Obviously, CIP has a lot of different options on the table as far
as, floating foundation partners. And like you say, I mean, at this
point, because of the lack of commercial deployment of floating,
the, the LCOE doesn't look, doesn't look good. Good compared to
fixed bottom, but even our own projections based on scaling up the,
the floating foundations looks like you're gonna get a better cost
per megawatt installed. LCOE for, for floating offshore. So, a
company that has this kind of a pedigree with Heinrich's
background, as well as Peter Nicholson is their, their CEO.
They're, they're eminently qualified through their, their past
history in Danish wind to be able to, to champion this. And
Heinrich's been working on this ever since he left Siemens, almost
No, probably eight years ago or so now, I think at this point. So
he's putting, putting everything into making sure that, that this
works and this kind of capital injection may, encourage them to get
to that next step, which is plus this partnership will encourage
the, the next step. for them to take, which is getting firm orders
for these floating foundations at scale and being able to establish
go out and get the credit established for them to be able to, to
put the fabrication facilities in place to start building these
things. Allen Hall: In other industry news, Venterra Group has
acquired Oceanscan, strengthening its offshore wind service
capabilities. Oceanscan provides subsea and non destructive test
equipment, geotechnical services, and specialist personnel to the
offshore wind sector. The acquisition was supported by a 30 million
equity investment from General Atlantic's Beyond Net Zero and First
Reserve, along with a 110 million in bank facility from HSBC,
NatWest, Rabobank, and Citibank. Oceanscan's operations span
multiple locations, including Aberdeen, Houston, Singapore, with
specialized subsidiaries across the United Kingdom. The offshore,
obviously in the UK, is really developed and it's expanding rapidly
with the change in government. And investment is starting to roll
in on some of these offshore support organizations. Philip Totaro:
It is, and it's interesting because Venterra's Typically known as
being more of a, maintenance provider and, and overall kind of
project management. They've been, however, branching out recently
with investments in other companies. And this acquisition. Just
kind of broadens out the scope of what they're able to, to offer.
So, I think it's it's a good thing certainly from, from their
perspective where they, they want to be able to offer more reach
and more scope, but it's coming at a point in time when, as you
mentioned, there's a tremendous amount of work that Oceanscan's
going to need to be able to undertake to support those projects.
So, I think this is coming at I think this is coming at a great
time for both companies and it, it should prove to be a fruitful
thing for Venterra.