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.
Score
Third Test, Day 1
New Zealand 229-7 (90 ov)
Pakistan
New Zealand won the toss and elected to bat
Skoda Superb Specs
Engine: 2-litre TSI petrol
Power: 190hp
Torque: 320Nm
Price: From Dh147,000
Available: Now
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Profile
Company: Justmop.com
Date started: December 2015
Founders: Kerem Kuyucu and Cagatay Ozcan
Sector: Technology and home services
Based: Jumeirah Lake Towers, Dubai
Size: 55 employees and 100,000 cleaning requests a month
Funding: The company’s investors include Collective Spark, Faith Capital Holding, Oak Capital, VentureFriends, and 500 Startups.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Infiniti QX80 specs
Engine: twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V6
Power: 450hp
Torque: 700Nm
Price: From Dh450,000, Autograph model from Dh510,000
Available: Now
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
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EA Sports FC 26
Publisher: EA Sports
Consoles: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S
Rating: 3/5
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
Cricket World Cup League Two
Oman, UAE, Namibia
Al Amerat, Muscat
Results
Oman beat UAE by five wickets
UAE beat Namibia by eight runs
Fixtures
Wednesday January 8 –Oman v Namibia
Thursday January 9 – Oman v UAE
Saturday January 11 – UAE v Namibia
Sunday January 12 – Oman v Namibia
Why it pays to compare
A comparison of sending Dh20,000 from the UAE using two different routes at the same time - the first direct from a UAE bank to a bank in Germany, and the second from the same UAE bank via an online platform to Germany - found key differences in cost and speed. The transfers were both initiated on January 30.
Route 1: bank transfer
The UAE bank charged Dh152.25 for the Dh20,000 transfer. On top of that, their exchange rate margin added a difference of around Dh415, compared with the mid-market rate.
Total cost: Dh567.25 - around 2.9 per cent of the total amount
Total received: €4,670.30
Route 2: online platform
The UAE bank’s charge for sending Dh20,000 to a UK dirham-denominated account was Dh2.10. The exchange rate margin cost was Dh60, plus a Dh12 fee.
Total cost: Dh74.10, around 0.4 per cent of the transaction
Total received: €4,756
The UAE bank transfer was far quicker – around two to three working days, while the online platform took around four to five days, but was considerably cheaper. In the online platform transfer, the funds were also exposed to currency risk during the period it took for them to arrive.
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More on Quran memorisation:
Company%20profile
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Company profile
Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
Based: Dubai
Sector: Clothes rental subscription
Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded
England World Cup squad
Eoin Morgan (capt), Moeen Ali, Jofra Archer, Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler (wkt), Tom Curran, Liam Dawson, Liam Plunkett, Adil Rashid, Joe Root, Jason Roy, Ben Stokes, James Vince, Chris Woakes, Mark Wood
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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