Germans and Danes Bail Out Royal Dutch Shell Over Windfarm

German utility E.ON and Denmark’s DONG have agreed to buy Royal Dutch Shell’s stake in London Array, one of the world’s largest planned wind farms, lifting a threat it might be cancelled.

The companies said yesterday that DONG and E.ON, which already each own a third of the 1,000 MW project, would buy Shell’s third for an undisclosed sum.

Chief executive of E.ON UK, Dr Paul Golby, said: “We hope to be able to keep the project on track and we should be able to complete the first phase by the end of 2012.”

However, DONG said it had not made an investment decision.

A spokeswoman for E.ON said the company hoped the partners would make a decision to proceed with the project later this year.

Shell said in May that it wanted to sell out because rising costs made it unclear whether the planned 341 turbine wind farm in the Thames Estuary would be profitable.

E.ON said at the time that the decision would likely lead to delay and could scupper the project altogether.

Separately, utility Scottish & Southern Energy said yesterday it had received consent from the Scottish authorities to build Europe’s largest onshore wind farm, which will be between Biggar and Moffat, with a generation capacity of 456 MW.

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