Dr Sultan Al Jaber sees US as major partner in energy and AI

The UAE views the US as a major business partner in energy and technology, and investing in the world's largest economy is an “absolute imperative”, Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, said on Tuesday.

Countries with access to energy and infrastructure have a clear advantage over others, Dr Al Jaber, who is also Adnoc's managing director and group chief executive, said in a keynote address at the CeraWeek by S&P Global annual conference in Houston, Texas.

“This is where we see huge opportunities for the UAE to further invest and deepen partnerships with the US across multiple sectors, including the energy-AI nexus,” he said. “It is also where XRG, our newly launched transformational international energy investment company, can play a critical role.”

XRG was launched on November 27 as an international lower-carbon energy and chemicals investment company, with an enterprise value exceeding $80 billion. It will focus on addressing megatrends, including the exponential growth of artificial intelligence, the transformation of global energy systems, and the rising energy demands of emerging economies.

Adnoc moved its US investments to XRG in February. Among those investments is a 35 per cent stake in an ExxonMobil hydrogen plant in Baytown, a city roughly 42km east of Houston. It also bought an 11.7 per cent equity stake in the NextDecade Rio Grande LNG export facility and entered a supply agreement in May 2024.

Following US President Donald Trump's election victory, Dubai-based Damac also announced a $20 billion investment in American data centres. Meanwhile, UAE-based technology fund MGX joined Big Tech companies in the recent Stargate project, an AI joint venture to be located in Texas, as an initial equity funder.

Highlighting the massive amounts of electricity needed to power data centres, Dr Al Jaber said AI cannot be scaled without energy. The minister said power demand for data centres in the US will likely triple by 2030. “The race for AI supremacy is essentially an energy play,” he said.

In his speech, Dr Al Jaber also called for “pro-growth, pro-investment, pro-energy and pro-people” policies to help drive global growth.

“The world is finally waking up to the fact that energy is the solution. Energy is the beating heart of economies. It is the spinal cord of society,” he said. “The time has come for us to make energy great again,” he said.

Dr Al Jaber, the Cop28 president, also celebrated the 2023 climate summit for bringing “energy realism” when discussing climate.

The Cop28 summit delivered the historic UAE Consensus that called for the international community to turn away from fossil fuels to achieve net-zero by 2050. It also established targets to increase the world's renewable energy capacity.

“The UAE Consensus succeeded because it brought everyone to the table, and it resulted in a practical approach that followed market realities more than unrealistic mandates,” Dr Al Jaber said.

Looking ahead, more liquefied natural gas, nuclear, low-carbon intensity oil and commercially viable sources of renewable energy are needed to meet the growing demand for electricity.

“And that is exactly the approach we have adopted in the United Arab Emirates,” said Dr Al Jaber, highlighting the country's energy diversification efforts – including the addition of nuclear power.

During the CeraWeek event, Dr Al Jaber also met the heads of key global energy companies, discussing opportunities and the use of artificial intelligence to transform how energy is produced, distributed and optimised.

In meetings with US energy company heads, including Mike Wirth, chairman and chief executive of Chevron and ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods, they spoke about opportunities for closer UAE-US collaboration to deliver energy diversity. He met former US energy secretary Dan Brouillette and International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol on Monday.

He also met Patrick Pouyanne, chief executive of TotalEnergies, Tengku Taufik, chief executive of Malaysia’s Petronas, and Askhat Khassenov, chief executive of Kazakhstan’s KazMunayGaz.

Dr Al Jaber met Murray Auchincloss, chief executive of BP, and discussed the importance of “pursuing pragmatic, pro-investment policies”. In his meeting with Wael Sawan, chief executive of Shell, they discussed their partnership in the Ruwais LNG project, set to be one of the lowest-carbon intensity LNG plants in the world.

The minister also held meetings with BlackRock’s chief executive Larry Fink and Marcel van Poecke, chairman of Carlyle Group, discussing capital deployment in the energy sector.