Arab News
Arab news, Sat, May 17, 2025 | Dhu al-Qadah 19, 1446
UAE to boost energy investments in US to $440bn by 2035
UAE:
The UAE plans to increase the value of its
energy investments in the US to $440 billion in the next decade, it said on
Friday, boosting President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure major business deals
on a Gulf tour.
The wealthy oil power’s strategy was announced
during a presentation by Sultan Al-Jaber, Abu Dhabi oil giant ADNOC’s CEO, to
Trump during the last stage of his regional trip that has drawn huge financial
commitments from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The enterprise value of UAE investments in the US
energy sector will be boosted to $440 billion by 2035 from $70 billion now, Al-Jaber
told Trump, adding US energy firms will also invest in the UAE.
“Our partners have committed new investments worth
$60 billion in upstream oil and gas, as well as new and unconventional
opportunities,” Al Jaber said in front of a slide showing projects in the UAE
under the logos of US companies ExxonMobil, Oxy and EOG Resources.
Already in March, when senior UAE officials met
Trump, the UAE had committed to a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework in
the US to deepen reciprocal ties.
The framework will “substantially increase the
UAE’s existing investments in the US economy” in AI infrastructure,
semiconductors, energy, and manufacturing, the White House said in a statement.
‘Great progress’
“We’re making great progress for the $1.4 trillion
that UAE has announced it intends to spend in the United States,” Trump said in
Abu Dhabi, his last stop on a Gulf tour that has focused on investment deals,
not security crises in the Middle East, including Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Yesterday the two countries also agreed to create
a path for UAE to buy some of the world’s most advanced AI semiconductors from
American companies, a very big contract.”
Trump said the deal will generate billions of
dollars in business and accelerate efforts by the UAE, an oil power and regional
economic power, to become a major player in artificial intelligence.
“And I read where — the oil and gas and all is
great but you’re going to have equally big, and maybe even bigger — at some
point, you’ll be surpassing it with AI and other businesses, so that’s a great
tribute to the job you’ve done here,” Trump told UAE officials on Friday during
his visit.
XRG, the international investment arm of
ADNOC, is seeking to make a significant investment in US natural gas, Al Jaber,
who is also XRG’s executive chairman and minister of industry and advanced
technology, has said.
ADNOC’s stakes in NextDecade’s Rio Grande
LNG export facility and a planned ExxonMobil hydrogen plant — both in Texas —
were transferred to XRG, which was set up last year and which ADNOC has said has
$80 billion in assets. It has a mandate to pursue global deals in chemicals,
natural gas and renewables.
Mubadala Energy, an arm of Abu Dhabi’s
second largest sovereign wealth fund, last month signed a deal with US firm
Kimmeridge that will give it stakes in US gas assets.