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By Nina Chestney
LONDON, July 22 (Reuters) - Crown Estate Scotland said on
Thursday that it aims to make initial offers to successful
bidders in its ScotWind wind leasing round in January next year.
Crown Estate Scotland manages the seabed around Scotland.
Its ScotWind leasing tender is its first for a decade, and is
aimed at supporting the development of around 10 gigawatts (GW)
of offshore wind capacity.
The leasing round closed to applicants last Friday. Crown
Estate Scotland said it received 74 applications from developers
looking for the rights to build projects across the 15 areas of
the available seabed.
Bidders included Equinor, BP, EnBW
, Royal Dutch Shell, RWE, Macquarie
Group's Green Investment Group and Orsted.
Initial offers will be made to successful applicants next
January and then those agreements will be finalised after that,
Crown Estate Scotland said.
Developers will then be able to move forward with their
detailed plans and start work on project activities.
Crown Estate Scotland grants full seabed leases only when
developers have all the necessary consents and planning
permissions from the Scottish government and other bodies.
Option fees will be paid by successful applicants to Crown
Estate Scotland in exchange for securing the rights to areas of
the seabed. The maximum amount payable will be 100,000 pounds
($136,830) per km2 of seabed.
($1 = 0.7308 pounds)
(Reporting by Nina Chestney; editing by David Evans)
