BIG WIND!
Talisman blows into Scotland
$1.25B offshore wind farm proposed
Scott Haggett
Calgary Herald
Saturday, September 27, 2003
Jim Buckee
Talisman Energy Inc. is branching out from the petroleum business with a proposal to build one of the world's largest windpower farms offshore Scotland that could cost as much as $1.25 billion.
Jim Buckee, chief executive of the Calgary-based multinational petroleum producer, said Talisman, along with partner Scottish & Southern Electricity PLC, is examining the feasibility of building a facility that could generate as much as one gigawatt of electricity -- enough to power close to a million homes.
Speaking to reporters Friday at the Global Business Forum, Buckee said the company is interested in the project to take advantage of U.K. government regulations that will require power companies to have at least 10 per cent of their electricity come from renewable sources by the end of the decade.
"The government has introduced a penalty, by 2010, of 30 pounds a megawatt hour for generators who don't have 10 per cent renewable," he said. "It's this severe penalty that has pushed everyone to do anything renewable."
The facility would be near the company's Beatrice oilfield, about 120 kilometres northeast of Aberdeen, and would be built rising from water that is up to 40 metres deep.
The company is looking at building a pilot plant to see if its plan is feasible.
Buckee didn't give an estimated cost for the massive windfarm -- which if completed would generate several times more power than the biggest Canadian installation -- but a Scottish government paper on the project said the estimated cost of building the facility could be as much as 557 million pounds, or $1.25 billion.
However, the paper said it would need to be no more than 400 million pounds to be economic.
The Beatrice Wind Farm would contain up to 200 windmills, each capable of generating up to five megawatts of power from the constant winds that sweep the North Sea.
Stephen Snyder, chief executive of TransAlta Corp., Canada's largest owner of windpower generation, said he wasn't surprised Talisman would be considering such a venture on the other side of the Atlantic. According to him, the U.K. and Europe are well ahead of North America in developing wind as a generating resource.
"Europe is substantially ahead of North America in development of windpower and has been for a number of years," he said. "It's been driven by need and by government subsidies . . . In all of Canada we have less than (one gigawatt of wind-generated electricity) probably."
Snyder said the five-megawatt turbines envisaged by Buckee are also substantially larger than those used in Canada, where half to one megawatt turbines are the norm while only the newest facilities use 3-megawatt turbines.
TransAlta's windpower production totals 187 megawatts, including the newly opened McBride Lake facility near Pincher Creek, Alta., which produces 75 megawatts of power.
shaggett@theherald.canwest.com
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