[spenrose]

Could you please cite some evidence for your claim about competing commercially? Also, do you mean the technology in general or this particular effort? Here is a year-old write-up of a survey of experts published in a peer-reviewed journal which asserts that floating wind will be cost-competitive:

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/15/wind-energy-costs-set-c...

[wonton2]

I meant compared to other similar efforts. Since Statoil is a publicly owned company with its main goals being political, not economic.

[spenrose]

Thanks for the clarification. Next: are you asserting Statoil's public ownership by itself is evidence that costs will be higher, or do you have other evidence to support the claim?

[wonton2]

First: I would not use my claim to evaluate weather or not i will buy into their solution.

I work in IT, not offshore. My claims are based on living in Norway and reading about Statoil almost daily, and talking to people I know working in offshore, and on IT projects at Statoil. It is hard to find hard evidence for claims about Statoil. The closest thing i can find to evidence is to tell you to just check the headlines on some random Norwegian newspaper. This one is on the front page today: http://e24.no/energi/oljeinvesteringer/frykter-slutten-paa-s... one of the things stated there which could be relevant is that one project scheduled for completion in 2022 has had its construction costs cut in half from 100 billion NOK to 50 billion. Some would say this is evidence of Statoil being able to rationalize well. I would say this is evidence of Statoil having a history of over-spending. It all depends on your point of view, it is next to impossible to get the full picture.

[jononor]

Every oil company (and those serving them) has been overspending in the years of insanely high oil prices. It is not so much about Statoil. Of course people hold somewhat higher hopes for a state-owned company than independently funded private companies.