Enbridge buys stake in one of Europe’s largest wind parks for $1.7bn

Riffgat offshore wind park located in the southern North Sea. (Image by Impériale | Wikimedia Commons)

Enbridge (TSX, NYSE:ENB), Canada’s largest pipeline company, has acquired a 49.9% stake in German energy firm EnBW’s offshore wind park in a $1.7 billion deal including financing and transaction costs.

EnBW’s 1.8 billion euro ($1.9 billion) Hohe See wind park, to be located in the North Sea, has a planned capacity of about 500 megawatts (MW), which makes it one of Europe’s largest projects of its kind and the German utilities company’s largest park to date.

Enbridge and EnBW will jointly finance the wind park from construction through to commissioning in 2019, shouldering roughly half the investment sum each.

Both companies will jointly finance the wind park from construction through to commissioning in 2019, shouldering roughly half the investment sum each.

EnBW will be in charge of operating and maintaining the finished park based on a service and management contract, it said in a statement.

The partnership opens the door for Enbridge to participate in EnBW’s expansion project Albatros, for which an investment decision is expected early this year.

The Calgary-based company, which is mainly involved in oil and gas pipelines throughout Canada and the US and natural gas distribution in Ontario, said Thursday it had won US antitrust approval for a $28-billion merger Spectra Energy Corp. The deal creates North America’s biggest energy infrastructure company.

Enbridge logged Friday $1.78 billion in net income for 2016, or $1.95 per common share. It had $2.08 billion, or $2.28 per share of adjusted earnings, after excluding a number of items.

In the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, it had $365 million of net income, or 39 cents per share. Adjusted earnings were $522 million or 56 cents per share.

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