DOVER - The toppling of a major international investment firm left Delaware's offshore wind project in uncertain waters Sunday, although one project official said he was optimistic that the Bluewater Wind venture will survive.

Babcock & Brown, an Australia-based company that owns "virtually all" of Bluewater Wind, announced Friday it had agreed to a controlled breakup and liquidation of the company, which was once worth $12 billion, with outright collapse and bankruptcy still an imminent threat. The plan already leaves "no value" for stockholders who once paid as much as $35 a share in mid-2007.

Babcock & Brown acquired the owners of the Delaware offshore wind project in September 2007, a deal that Bluewater said would give the the wind company the "commitment, strength, reliability and financial backing" needed to build a wind farm off Rehoboth Beach.

Those assurances began cracking almost immediately as the global economic crisis took root and spread. Concern was growing even as Bluewater and Delmarva signed an estimated $800 million agreement in June that would support construction of 55 to 70 wind turbines more than a dozen miles off the Delaware coast.

"With this administration in Washington supporting renewable energy and wind energy so strongly, we continue to be very optimistic that the interest in both land-based and offshore wind will be strong," Jim Lanard, a Bluewater spokesman, said Sunday, "and that we'll find the necessary investors to continue the process of developing the relationship with Delmarva Power and building our offshore wind project in Delaware."

Babcock & Brown's North American Energy Development Group chief Hunter Armistead, who was active in final talks with Delmarva, could not be reached Sunday.

A Delmarva Power spokeswoman said she was not prepared to comment on the apparent loss of Bluewater's financial backer. Officials with the Public Service Commission, governor's office and Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control could not be reached.

Lanard said Bluewater has continued to pursue other regional offshore wind ventures. New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities has offered the company a $4 million rebate once Bluewater builds an offshore weather-study tower in waters off that state. The company also is pursuing possible agreements with Maryland that could increase the size of the wind farm off Delaware, and projects off other states.

Lawmakers are not optimistic.

Charles L. Copeland, a former Republican state senator who ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor last year, said some lawmakers predicted that Bluewater would face financing and market problems despite optimistic company forecasts.

"Several of us mentioned that, while the negotiations were going on, Babcock & Brown was putting their European wind resources up for sale," Copeland said. He noted that key financial justifications for the project, including projected steady increases in natural gas prices, also now are in question.

The Energy Department last month forecast natural gas prices to grow by less than 1 percent annually through 2030, partly because of newly found and exploited domestic supplies.

"My understanding was Babcock & Brown had a limited period to get the remaining investors it needed to make the deal happen," Copeland said, adding that he supports development of nonpolluting wind generation. "Given this and the overall global crisis, I just don't see how that's going to happen without the federal government stepping in" with major subsidies and other support for alternative energy projects.

Lanard said Bluewater remains in compliance with its Delmarva Power contract, which requires a construction start by 2012. The agreement provides for termination of the contract and damages if the wind company fails to meet permitting, financing and startup milestones.

"We've not missed a step in that process, and we continue every day to work very hard to achieve the goals set out in the power purchase agreement" with Delmarva, Lanard said.

A more immediate concern, Lanard said, is delays in federal publication of rules for offshore alternative energy projects. Those rules originally were due by the end of last year, and delays represent "a greater unknown."

Jeremy M. Firestone, an attorney and University of Delaware professor who has long supported Bluewater, said that it was unclear what effect Babcock & Brown's meltdown would mean in the long run.

"It would seem that someone will be interested in investing in Bluewater. We'll have to wait and see who that is," Firestone said.

Bluewater originally wanted to build a 200-turbine, 600-megawatt wind farm off Delaware, under a plan that would have required Delmarva to buy up to 450 megawatts. Final agreements require Delmarva to buy only up to 200 megawatts even if the wind farm grows.

Disputes over the project's cost and risks led to a series of changes, cutbacks, legislative debates and threats of legal action. The final deal requires Delmarva to buy only the output from a 200-megawatt wind farm, even if Bluewater adds turbines later.

Purchases would amount to 14 percent of Delmarva's electricity total, although summertime wind production - expected to be lower because of light winds - would be only a fraction of that amount.