Equinor renewables VP on Utsira tender win: 'Now need to secure investable project'

Development still in 'very early phase' after floating wind allocation but oil & gas giant hopes to draw from Hywind experience, Daniel Rogstad says

Policy
Daniel Rogstad, Equinor.
Photo: Jonas Messel Larsen, Europower
Daniel Rogstad, a vice president in Equinor's renewables business, dampened expectations somewhat after the oil and gas giant, in a consortium with local player Vargronn, was allocated a site in the first phase of Norway’s floating wind tender for the Utsira Nord (North) area, which had been carried out applying qualitative criteria.
Asked by Recharge’s sister publication Europower why Equinor expects to be successful also in the second phase of the tender, where up to NKr35bn ($3.46bn) of state support is up for grabs, but it has to compete with an EDF-led group, Rogstad said: “This [today’s tender win] is an area allocation. It’s a very early phase. Now we need to work thoroughly on the project in the area we’ve been given, with the hope of securing an investable project.

“What we see as a good opportunity is a combination of the experience we bring from both companies.

“For Equinor, that’s the Hywind journey, combined with our understanding of the Norwegian continental shelf and the stakeholder landscape here.”

Equinor in 2023 commissioned the 88MW Hywind Tampen array, which is still the world's largest floating wind farm in operation.

The company then had promised to still construct bigger floating wind farms in order to reduce costs and build a new industry on the shoulders of the oil and gas sector.
The pledge was important after Equinor previously had put its 1GW Trollvind floating project off Norway on ice, which had been one of the greatest hopes in the industry to propel the floating sector from the pilot array stage to utility scale.

Equinor will now start the formal process for a licence application at Utsira Nord, Rogstad said.

“We’ll work thoroughly on the project within the consortium. Initially, we’ll submit a preliminary notification. But of course, to take part in a future auction, that will have to be done.”

Equinor today was allocated site 3 at the southern part of the Utsira Nord area, while EDF and its local partner Deep Wind Offshore were allocated site 2, in the middle of the Utsira Nord zone.

“As I understand from what the [energy] minister said today, we and the other consortia applied for different areas. I assume that’s a coincidence. We made an overall assessment of which area we wanted to prioritise,” Rogstad said.

The southern area within the Utsira Nord zone “gives us the best starting point to move forward and, hopefully, develop an investable project for our portfolio in the future,” he added.

Bernd Radowitz contributed to this article
(Copyright)

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Published 11 December 2025, 14:34Updated 11 December 2025, 14:34
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