Shell Pull Out Of US Offshore Wind Farm Contract
By Paul Homewood
Now Shell pull out:
Shell’s finance chief said on Thursday the firm had exited a power purchase agreement (PPA) for the planned SouthCoast windfarm off the coast of Massachusetts, agreeing to pay a penalty rather than face rising costs for building the project.
Energy firms from BP (BP.L) to Orsted (ORSTED.CO) have announced hefty writedowns in recent days for their U.S. windfarm projects in the face of high inflation.
The project, formerly known as Mayflower, was planned to have capacity of 2.4 GW.
A PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) was signed by Shell last year to provide electricity to Massachusetts utilities at $76.73/MWh, about £60/MWh. Just months later, they unsuccessfully attempted to renegotiate the contract.
I suspect that Shell make one more attempt to get a better price, which the Massachusetts public will end up paying for.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Maybe Shell pulled out because of the (reported) jelly-fish invasion on our coasts – according to the BBC just now on the News. They showed, quite disgracefully, a report using old stock footage of thousands of jelly-fish spawning in some far-off ocean -and, just to add more concern to their clip, they managed to show a clip of a beached Portuguese Man-O-War (but again, didn’t say where) which, they said, had a very dangerous sting!! The strap line managed to say that they had increased by nearly 30%. But didn’t mention how that number had been measured.
The BBC is a disgrace.
The BBC play this trick time and time again. As when they are reporting on slightly warmer weather here and they show old footage of forest fires, happening somewhere, in the background.
I haven’t seen the BBC report (don’t watch the BBC any more) but based on a similar story in the Mail, it’s pretty much straight up fraud. The suppose3d increase in jellyfish is based solely on an increase in sightings reported to the Marine Conservation Society’s citizen science programme. This just not mean more jellyfish, just that more have been reported, probably because more people have become aware of the programme since last year.
The total number of sightings is 1,737: https://www.mcsuk.org/what-you-can-do/citizen-science/sightings/dive-into-the-data/
(The man-o-war does turn up in the UK from time to time, by the way, depending on the winds)
Good, the silly renewables industry is suffering a death of a thousand cuts – I have no sympathy, they’ve conned taxpayers out of billions over the years
To hell with the bBC, -no longer represents Britain.
Sad really how what was the once the bastion of factual global news has sunk to the propagandists agenda driven establishment they now are!
The B needs to replace either by a P or an H given its current news output.
“Avangrid and Shell–Ocean Winds face $60m in fines for nixed Massachusetts projects”
. . . and save BILLIONS!
b
We’re gonna need a bigger subsidy.
Before this govt both the tories & labour (unless it was mining) would say that private industry would have to survive on their own feet, …now they only have to suggest that they might pull out and they get a subsidy
The stupidity of Shell was getting into so called ‘renewables’ in the first place. Instead they should be challenging Net Zero policies.
All these firms thought there was free money on the magic money tree, but found in reality it evaporated like the morning dew.
Shell may be many things, but stupid isn’t one of them.
Big Oil/Gas did a pretty good job of routing coal in the UK energy mix. The same was well underway in the EU, until Putin did put a spanner in the works (coincidentally a major coal exporter, but that’s not the point). The UK wanted to be super-virtuous and went much further and faster, which leaves us totally dependent on Big Oil/Gas.
For those who may be wondering, don’t be too surprised Big Oil/Gas happily played along with the MMGW myth.
National Grid did a great job of building lots of power networks to connect and interconnect lots of things as the UK didn’t build new reliable power generating units. Don’t ask them for contrarian views on MMGW.
If there is such a thing as Big Nuclear, does anybody think they will get a rational and questioning position on MMGW from those quarters?
I think Arthur Scargill was far more important. He turned coal into an unreliable source of energy and helped to drive up its cost. Thatcher understood that paying bonuses to build up large stocks at power stations was essential to break his stranglehold, but she also relied on an extra 500,000 bbl/day of reliable supply of power station Heavy Fuel Oil, and the ability of refiners to trade light North Sea oil for heavy gunge to provide that. Scargill kick-started the Brent market, which in turn provided the impetus to undermine OPEC pricing by providing a fungible alternative. The resultant oil price crash did oil companies few favours. But coal never recovered to take proper advantage of electricity privatisation, leaving the door wide open for gas. Government insistence on landing gas in the UK ensured that it was going to be a cheap fuel, and was clearly the right policy in the UK interest, helping to restore industrial competitiveness.
Ben van Beurden was a burden. Wael Sawan seems to be steering a better course.
Yes, far too many businesses thought going along with the nonsense was a better way than standing up to it. But also far too many had senior management who wholly bought into it.
And yet we keep being told that Unreliables are the cheapest form of power – wind and sun being free.
So why do they keep getting dearer and dearer for the consumers despite swallowing ever-increasing subsidies?
It’s a mystery!
Yep, strange isn’t it, as we see the great German industrial machine slowly(?) collapsing under the costs of increasing cheap wind and solar. The proposed solution is to subsidise the energy costs for industry that come from the subsidised energy meaning that either Germany drowns in debt or taxes have to increase which would see us back to the start as industry finds it too expensive in Germany.
Catweazle,
I’m sure that Mr Ed Milliband can explain it very simply?
This will be after he has learnt joined up writing and simple sums?
The remarkable thing is supposedly he did double maths at A level.
Or how to eat a bacon sandwich?
🤣