据美国钻井网站2022年8月11日报道，海上风电产业已经不再处于起步阶段，它是一项已经过验证的技术，它将在全球经济脱碳中发挥关键作用。伍德麦肯兹表示，未来十年，海上风电产业将吸引近1万亿美元的新投资。
伍德麦克兹表示，越来越多的竞争对手正蜂拥而至，希望利用这股热潮将创造的巨大机遇。目前，石油巨头——尤其是欧洲的石油巨头——在这个海上风电市场上所占的份额还很小，但随着它们在零碳价值链上押下更大的赌注，它们的雄心正在增强。
长期以来，上游行业一直以每桶油当量（boe）为基础分析现金利润率。这一易于理解的指标揭示了上游油气资产每单位生产产生的经营现金流。这对于阐明现金产生能力和基准投资组合特别有用。
传统的可再生能源投资分析与油气投资相比，通常侧重于相对风险和回报。但伍德麦肯兹声称，与传统业务的比较需要新的衡量标准。这家分析公司使用的新的现金利润率指标——吉焦当量（GJe）的营运现金流——超越了传统的比较，它揭示了海上风电产业的优势。
通过追踪资产数据，海上风电产业将为石油巨头带来比新油田油气项目高25%的单位运营现金利润率。即使是最低的海上风电投资组合的平均运营现金利润率也高于上游的平均水平。而且，可再生能源技术的利润率超过了深水——这是石油巨头利润率最高的资产类别。
海上风能的强劲营运现金利润率表现表明，其财务奖励不仅仅是长期稳定的现金流。这样的现金收入可以很好地支持其他投资组合领域，实际上，也可以提供大量股息，并对冲碳和碳氢化合物价格的风险。
如果海上风电产业想要吸引到所需的资本，在实现全球气候目标方面发挥作用，那么海上风电项目不断下降的内部收益率将是不可持续的。伍德麦克兹认为，中位数的回报率是不可接受的。
企业已经开始依赖传统的债务融资和资产循环工具来提高内部收益率。随着该行业的成熟，其他手段也将发挥作用，以提高回报，如增加商业敞口、电力交易和建设电力-x项目。
伍德麦肯兹还在报告中表示，石油巨头可能会在海上风力发电方面进行长期尝试，因为该行业并非没有挑战。供应导致的成本上涨和债务成本上升的乌云笼罩着海上风力发电，该行业目前正努力应对供应过剩的问题，而下一代技术的需求意味着将需要大规模投资来支持新的塔式生产设施。
但经过多年对石油和天然气波动的管理，石油巨头已经具备在风险和回报之间取得平衡的能力。石油巨头手头宽裕，可以充分利用即将到来的巨大机遇。在最近创纪录的石油和天然气价格以及创纪录季度利润的帮助下，石油巨头肯定已准备好这样做。
原文如下：
Big Oil To Go Deep Into Trillion-Dollar Offshore Wind Industry
No longer in its infancy, offshore wind is a proven technology on course to play a key role in the decarbonization of the global economy. Over the next decade, the industry will attract almost $1 trillion in new investment, Wood Mackenzie said.
According to Woodmac, a growing number of competitors are flocking to take advantage of the massive opportunities that will be created by the boom. The Majors – notably the European Majors – are no exception. Right now, their share of the market is small, but ambition is ramping up as they bet bigger with their investments in the zero-carbon value chain.
The upstream sector has long analyzed cash margins on a per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) basis. This well-understood metric reveals how much operating cashflow upstream oil and gas assets generate per unit of production. It’s especially useful for articulating cash generation capacity and benchmarking portfolios.
Conventional analysis of renewables pitted against oil and gas investment usually focuses on relative risk and returns. But Woodmac claims that the comparison with the legacy business needs new metrics. The new cash margin metric used by the analytics firm – operating cash flow per gigajoule equivalent (GJe) – goes beyond traditional comparisons, and it reveals that offshore wind comes up trumps.
Tracking asset-by-asset data, offshore wind will deliver 25 percent higher unit operating cash margins for Big Oil in comparison to new field oil and gas projects. Even the lowest offshore wind portfolio average operating cash margin is above the upstream average. And the renewable technology’s margins trump deepwater – Big Oil’s highest margin asset class.
Offshore wind’s strong operating cash margin performance shows that the financial prize is more than simply long-term and steady cash flows. Such a cash wedge within a business is a good way to support other portfolio areas or, indeed, a significant dividend commitment, and to hedge exposure to carbon and hydrocarbon prices.
Returns do matter. Falling IRRs from offshore wind projects will not be sustainable if the sector is to attract the capital required for it to play its part in meeting global climate goals. Woodmac believes that mid-single digit returns will not be acceptable.
Companies have already been leaning on traditional tools of debt-financing and asset rotation to lift IRRs. As the sector matures other levers, such as increasing merchant exposure, power trading, and building power-to-x projects, will also come into play to boost returns.
Wood Mackenzie also said in its report that the Majors could play the long game with offshore wind as the industry is not without challenges. Dark clouds of supply-led cost inflation and the rising cost of debt are looming large over offshore wind and the industry is currently grappling with oversupply, while the demands of next-generation technology mean that massive investment will be needed to back new tower production facilities.
But after years of managing volatility in oil and gas, the Majors are equipped to get the balance between risk and return right. And they are flush with deep pockets of cash to take advantage of the huge upcoming opportunities. Helped by recent record prices of oil and gas as well as record quarterly profits, they are certainly well posed to do so.
