Floating turbines may join Norway's offshore rigs

By Wojciech Moskwa

UTSIRA, Norway (Reuters) - Giant turbines the size of jumbo jets bobbing on the North Sea may soon become as common off Norway as oil and gas platforms.

At least that is the ambition of Norwegian authorities and industry, eager to splash some green on their oily image and use their offshore expertise to corner a potentially lucrative new market -- floating wind farms in deep sea waters.

Norway's government is contemplating licensing "blocks" for offshore wind generation, and Norwegian oil company StatoilHydro aims to start work next year on a floating turbine project near the site of the first North Sea oil discovery 40 years ago.

"We are the best place in Norway if you love wind," Mayor Jarle Nilsen said of Utsira, a North Sea island of just 6 sq km (2.3 square miles) and home to 210 people who already get most of their power from two onshore turbines.

"We had wind every day except one last year," he told Reuters, thrilled by the prospect of two experimental offshore wind projects anchoring in nearby waters.

With Europe's second-longest coastline after Greece, Norway is hard hit by winds blowing off the Atlantic and, along with Britain, well placed for wind energy projects.

Offshore turbines can be twice as powerful as land-based units due to stronger, more sustained winds at sea.

Out of sight from the coast, such wind farms could use modified, more efficient turbines because limiting noise, a key concern for land-based wind farms, is not as critical offshore.