Shell consortium to pull out of UK wind project

LONDON Dec 7 (Reuters) - British oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) confirmed on Sunday that the company and its partners have withdrawn from a major UK wind energy project.

The consortium of Shell, Scottish Power SPW.PZ and Denmark's Dong Energy have abandoned the Cirrus Array project off the Northwest coast after denying a month ago that it had exited the project.

"The consortium has pulled out of the project," a spokesman told Reuters.

The project had been blighted by concerns from the Ministry of Defence over radar interference from turbines, said the Sunday Times.

"We tried hard to find solutions to solve the problems with the military interest," the Shell spokesman said.

Shell will have just one small wind project in the UK after abandoning Cirrus and will focus its attentions on wind energy projects in North America, the spokesman added.

BP has already said its future wind investments would be focused on the U.S. rather than the UK or Europe. The consortium cancelled the 800 million pound project after five years and millions of pounds of investment, said the report. (Reporting by Lorraine Turner, editing by Will Waterman)