RWE CEO says he sees no need for writedowns on major US offshore project

RWE, the world's number two developer of offshore wind, sees no need to write down a 3.0-gigawatt project in the United States, its CEO said, just days after the US government ordered bigger rival Orsted to stop construction on an advanced site.

The so-called Community Offshore Wind project, which RWE owns in a 73 to 27 per cent ownership split with Britain's National Grid, has been put on ice and no investment decision has been taken, Markus Krebber told journalists.

Offshore wind has been in the crosshairs of US President Donald Trump, whose administration has taken several steps to halt or prevent construction of projects off the US coast. Trump has described wind turbines as "garbage" in the past, an increasingly popular view among Western taxpayers.

Over the weekend, the US ordered Denmark's Orsted, the offshore wind sector's biggest player, to stop construction on an offshore wind project near Rhode Island.

"We have pulled the plug," Krebber said with regard to Community Offshore Wind, reiterating earlier comments that the construction on the project had not yet started.

Krebber said he therefore saw no need to write down the project, which has a book value of 800 million euro ($937 million). He said that if political opposition persisted against the sector it could become a matter for the courts given lease payments have been made in the past.

"If the investment opportunity is frustrated, then we need to talk about the lease payments," Krebber said.

"It cannot be that the federal government says, 'I will allow you to build offshore in my waters, but in return I want payments from you,' and then once the payments have been made, it says, 'It's no longer possible'."

Krebber also said RWE had no interest in taking on offshore wind projects in Japan that Mitsubishi is withdrawing from.

(Reporting by Tom Kaeckenhoff and Christoph Steitz Editing by Tomasz Janowski)