This week on News Flash, Allen, Joel and Phil discuss DOF Group’s acquisition of Maersk Supply Service, TotalEnergies’ growth in the renewables market, and Brookfield’s acquisition of minority stake in four offshore wind farms owned by Ørsted.

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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: Joel, Norwegian offshore supply vessel company Dof Group has completed the acquisition of Denmark based Maersk Supply Service, which will be renamed Dof Denmark. The deal expands Dof’s fleet to 78 modern offshore and subsea vessels, including 65 owned vessels, with the addition of Maersk Supply Service’s 22 vessels.

The combined company now has a workforce of more than 5, 000 employees and will continue offering integrated offshore services for both oil and gas and the growing offshore wind market. So you’re seeing big players here, Joel, in offshore wind support. This is one of them.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. From my past in offshore oil and gas, DOF is, they’re in on every contract, right?

They’re a big company. They do things well and they do it right. Norwegians in the offshore world, you’re always, you always look at them like the cream of the crop. Whenever they show up on site, they’re expensive. And there’s some specialists sometimes. But they are, they’re always getting things done correctly.

That’s why people value them no matter where you are in the world. And DoF is a country, or a company, that values them. Full of all Norwegians. So, them grabbing Maersk, of course. The Norway Denmark connection of cousins or depending on which side you’re talking to. Little brother, big brother. It’s a, it’s an easy tie up.

Maersk, of course. A fantastic company with a lot of assets running all over the world. But also looking to you never know what they’re going to do with this capital. Diversify a little bit try some other things. So Dof grabbing Maersk makes absolute sense to me. And if it was one company that would be buying some big chunks of Maersk assets as in Maersk supply service, Dof would be the one.

Allen Hall: Total Energies has reported significant growth in its renewable energy operations for Q3 of 2024 with total power production reaching 29. 7 terawatt hours. Up 17 percent year over year. The company’s renewable power production increased by 45 percent to 19. 6 terawatt hours with net power generation capacity up 36 percent to 21.

6 gigawatts. Total energies reached a gross renewable capacity of 24. 2 gigawatts with solar dominating at 15. 6 gigawatts followed by onshore wind. At 5. 9 gigawatts. Phil, Total Energy is just becoming a huge player in renewables and the growth in the Q3 is amazing.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and what’s really fascinating is that with all the other oil and gas companies pulling away and pulling back from Investments in renewables totals remained committed to it and has always been one of the bigger, oil and gas and utility companies in Europe besides maybe, stack craft event fall to, well, you could say Orsted maybe but, they, they’ve remained committed to a renewables portfolio and have, based on their presence in the utility business around the world even in, as far foreign places as, as some of the Asia Pacific islands they’ve, they’ve had and own and operate renewable assets for, for more than a decade, going on, 15, almost 20 years at this point.

So it’s, it’s good to see that they’re. Not only committed, but they’re actually seeing results because one of the reasons why a lot of these other oil and gas companies pulled out is because they were rationalizing that, hey, we can get better financial returns through oil and gas investments. Totaro’s making a go of it with renewables and actually turning a profit on renewables, so that’s great.

Joel Saxum: I think Total did a really smart move when they started the Total E Ren group a few years back. And it was like, we’re going to go into renewables, we’re going to do it with, or in a portion, we’re going to do it with this Total E Ren group. And what you saw develop was, of course, they watched it, they played with it, and they made sure they got it right.

And then Total Energies went back and just grabbed the whole thing, absorbed it as part of Total Energies back in, I think it was mid 2023 ish. So over, a year ago, year and a half ago. So, kind of a good strategy there that I’d like to see some more people play out with you’re able to manage risk that way, throw some capital over here, take a look at how it goes, see if it works, and then if it works well, as they did execute on Total E Ren, well, boom, grab it absorb it as part of the the parent company, and move forward, so now you see the, they’re yielding those fruits from that little farming experiment.

Allen Hall: Brookfield has signed an agreement to acquire 12. 5 percent minority stake in four UK offshore wind farms owned by Orsted, marking their first investment in UK offshore wind. The transaction, valued at 1. 7 1, Hornsea 2, Walney Extension and Burbo Bank Extension projects, with a combined capacity of 3. 5 gigawatts.

Orsted will retain a 37 percent ownership interest and continue to oversee maintenance and operation of the wind power plants. Now, Phil, Orsted has been making a number of transactions lately. It looks like this one is there to improve their performance. Their pocketbook a little bit.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, certainly, because they, given some of the pullback from markets like the U.

S. and some of the losses that they took and impairments they took from those projects, I think raising a bit of capital was necessary. Obviously, they got. An equity stake in the company from Econore a few weeks back. And with this investment by Brookfield, it’s, it’s interesting because these four assets, you would normally have attracted any kind of Typical kind of financial investor through an asset rotation, so it’s, it’s not uncommon to, to sell off a minority stake in, in these assets, but the timing of it is, is noteworthy, so as we just talked about, capital raise and, and cash in the pocket, that’s good, but the fact that it’s Brookfield who has made a concerted effort to entrenched themselves in the UK onshore wind market and a little bit in, in the solar world.

That’s sending a strong signal that they are prepared to start opening their pocketbook as well for stakes in other projects potentially in the UK or elsewhere throughout throughout Europe where they haven’t actually had a presence yet. So Brookfield’s not done, a ton of investments in, German or Dutch or, or Belgian or Danish offshore wind at this point.

So this could be, the beginning of that process.

Joel Saxum: When you think about Brookfield, the, over the last five to 10 years, they haven’t quietly become a player. They’ve very loudly become a large player. And I think it’s great to see that amount of capital being placed into the market and used for good, right?

They did the Deriva big acquisition the other year among others. And when you look at the, kind of the flag flying here, Horn C1, Bank, those are big time wind farms over in the North Atlantic on Oersted’s portfolio. So. Brookfield making some moves. Great to see that happening and the capital being reinvested.

And it’ll help Orsted, right? Orsted needs a little bit of that black ink on the, on the sheet. So, kudos to the deal and I’d like to see more of it.