A consortium led by TotalEnergies has won a tender to develop and build a 1.5-gigawatt wind farm off the coast of Normandy, marking France’s largest such project to date.
The deal, according to a Reuters report, allows France, which lags behind European Union renewable energy targets, to inch towards its goal for offshore wind capacity of 45 gigawatts by 2050, up from the current 1.5 GW.
“TotalEnergies is proud to be French and invest in France, but in effect a new PPE is necessary to reassure industry players and launch new tenders,” Isabelle Patrier, head of TotalEnergies France, told journalists at a press briefing on Wednesday.
The offshore wind award is Total’s first in France, where most previous tenders have gone to state-owned EDF or partially state-owned Engie.
Of Total’s 25 GW of gross renewable capacity, just 2 GW are in France, although that will rise to 4 GW by 2030.
The project represents an investment of 4.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) excluding grid connection costs, Total said, with the tariff set by the state at 66 euros per megawatt-hour, a sharp increase from previous tenders, which Total said reflected a 50% rise in construction costs.
The wind farm would produce six terawatt-hours of electricity annually, supplying the equivalent of one million households, the French government said separately.
Total said it expected to make a final investment decision in early 2029, with power production to begin in 2033.
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Meanwhile, the company’s sale of a minority stake in a Nigerian onshore oil producer has been canceled, Reuters quoted the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) in a separate report.
According to the report, the Nigerian regulators said Total agreed in July 2024 to sell its 10% stake in Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC) to Mauritius-based Chappal Energies, one of a wave of divestments by oil majors in recent years of onshore Nigerian oil assets.
However, regulatory approval for the sale granted last October has been withdrawn because the two sides have not met financial commitments required to complete the deal, according to Eniola Akinkuoto, spokesperson for the NUPRC.
“The ministerial consent was accompanied by certain financial obligations to the Nigerian people with strict deadlines. However, both parties failed to meet their financial commitments after repeated extensions, forcing the commission to cancel the deal,” Akinkuoto TOLD Reuters on Tuesday.
One source familiar with the negotiations told Reuters that Chappal failed to raise the $860 million, and as a result, Total did not fulfill its requirement to pay regulatory fees and cover funds for environmental rehabilitation and future liabilities.
In March, Shell sold its 30% stake in SPDC to a consortium of five mostly local companies for up to $2.4 billion.
U.S. major Exxon Mobil, Italy’s Eni, and Norway’s Equinor have also sold Nigerian assets in recent years to focus on newer, more profitable operations elsewhere.
Chappal Energies, which specialises in producing oil and gas from mature and distressed upstream assets in the Niger Delta, last year successfully closed the purchase of Nigerian assets from Equinor for $1.2 billion, with financial backing from Mauritius Commercial Bank and commodities trader Trafigura.
Chappal has not disclosed its financial backers for the proposed purchase from TotalEnergies.
Other SPDC shareholders include the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (55%) and Eni (5%).
TotalEnergies has yet to respond to Channels Television’s enquiry on the development as of press time.
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