BP and Shell picked up two of the largest licences awarded by the Crown Estate in its auction of Scottish offshore wind farm sites.
The two oil and gas giants, which are both undertaking rapid green energy expansion programmes, bid around £86mln each for the sites they were awarded.
Total bids worth £700mln for 17 projects were accepted by the Crown Estate, slightly below the maximum predictions of £860mln, with the money to be paid to the Scottish government.
BP has been awarded licence E1, an 859 sq km block with 2.9Gw of fixed generating capacity on a line east from Dundee.
The FTSE 100 group partnered with German sustainable group EnBW on its bid, with the project to be named Morven and involve an investment of £10bn. Construction work is set to start in 2026.
Shell, meanwhile, picked up a similar size block just to the north.
Other big spenders included power utility SSE, which paid £86mln for a site between BP and Shell, Scottish Power, which bid £144mln for two sites and will work with Shell on 5Gw of floating capacity and with Iberdrola on another site, and Offshore Wind Power, which paid £65.7mln for its licence.
The ScotWind leasing round was the first Scottish offshore auction for more than a decade.
Simon Hodge, Chief Executive of Crown Estate Scotland, said: “Today’s results are a fantastic vote of confidence in Scotland’s ability to transform our energy sector.
Most of the awards were off the eastern and northerly coasts of Scotland, though one of the licences won by Scottish Power is something of an outlier and sits off the west coast just above Northern Ireland.
BP said on the award: "The success of the bid is expected to unlock a number of investments across the country, as part of BP’s integrated energy company approach, leveraging its existing North Sea infrastructure, skills and relationships and EnBW’s experience in offshore wind"
Wael Sawan at Shell added: Floating wind plays to our strengths in deeper offshore projects, and we are well placed to help advance the wider take-up of this important clean energy source."