It is hard to imagine a site less sheltered from powerful North Sea’s winds than the Dudgeon Offshore wind farm. The 67 turbines of the facility sit 32km off the coast of Norfolk on England’s east coast, well beyond any land-based obstructions. The project, completed in 2017, has a generating capacity of 402 megawatts — enough for 430,000 homes.

Yet Dudgeon’s biggest shareholder, Norway’s state-owned energy company Equinor, is still worried that a rival’s planned development could take the wind from its turbine blades.

Equinor this year complained in a submission to inspectors that the Outer Dowsing Offshore Wind project proposed by Corio Generation, TotalEnergies and Gulf Energy Development posed a threat to its future revenue. The 1.5 gigawatt new project, more than 13km away, could cost Dudgeon, a sister site and projected extensions between ￡66mn and ￡206mn in revenue over their lifetimes, Equinor wrote.