This $64 Billion Oil Company Is Setting a New Course by Investing in Wind Energy 

Justin Loiseau    fool.com

Can an oil company really have a comparative advantage in alternative energy?

Excerpt:

Floating wind farms aren't a new idea, but taking them to market is. For the past six years, Statoil ASA has been analyzing and tweaking a single-turbine demo project it built off the coast of Norway . The lessons Statoil learned have helped it cut costs for this latest project by around 65 %. The new $230 million five -turbine farm will be capable of generating 30 MW of electricity, enough to power around 20,000 homes .

"Our objective with the Hywind pilot park is to demonstrate the feasibility of future commercial, utility-scale floating wind farms," said Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil's executive vice president for New Energy Solutions, in a statement. "This will further increase the global market potential for offshore wind energy, contributing to realising our ambition of profitable growth in renewable energy and other low-carbon solutions ."

Unlike many other renewable energy projects by oil corporations, this is more than a positive publicity stunt. Statoil and other offshore oil companies have a unique competitive advantage when it comes to offshore wind. No other industry has the experience or the infrastructure to float a 140 -ton metal structure 15 miles off a coastline in depths exceeding 100 meters. Statoil plans to prove that it can do just that when this project's production kicks off in 2017 .

Link to full article -

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/11/22/this-64-billion-oi...