SeaEnergy eyes offshore wind services market

LONDON, ENGLAND - British offshore wind farm developer SeaEnergy is planning to set up a services division to take advantage of plans by the government to turn Britain into the world's largest offshore wind market.

"I hope the services business will be put together this year. I'm working on it intently at the moment," Executive Chairman Steve Remp told Reuters in a telephone interview.

SeaEnergy started life as oil services company Ramco in the 1970s and was at one point in the late 1990s the largest company on London's junior AIM market.

Since deciding to exit its oil and gas assets last September, SeaEnergy has won the right to develop the Moray Firth zone off the coast of Scotland in conjunction with Portugal's EDP Renovaveis in the UK's Round 3 tender.

SeaEnergy, which prefers to develop wind farms in conjunction with big utility partners, said China was also a key area of focus for the company.

"The second largest offshore wind market to emerge hot on the heels of the UK will be China. We are being sought after there now that Round 3 is done," Remp said.

Remp said the company had already attracted some attention from funds wanting to invest in the stock but it was early days just yet.

"On the back of Round 3 we will now begin to see institutional interest in the stock," Remp said. "There's going to be a lot of newsflow in the next few months and I think investors will be very excited about a company like us getting into services."

He added the UK offshore wind industry had the potential to create one or more FTSE 100 companies.

"Whether we'll be one of them I can't tell you, but hopefully we won't stay a smaller player."

Remp said the offshore wind market could be seen as rerun of the North Sea oil explosion. He cautioned the government had a lot to do to ensure Britain made the most of the opportunity, rather than letting international firms steal a march as they did in the North Sea in the 1970s.

"In terms of scale, you're looking at 6,000 turbines - that's a lot of ships, a lot of vessels, cable and steel. So we want to be sure from a UK perspective that there is manufacturing set up."