UAE's ADNOC to invest tens of billions to build US gas business, FT reports

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company is planning to invest tens of billions of dollars to build a natural gas business in the United States, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

Nameer Siddiqui, the newly appointed chief investment officer of ADNOC’s overseas investment arm XRG, told the newspaper that the company is reviewing 29 potential deals aimed at creating a vertically integrated global gas business.

The strategy is to diversify XRG’s commodity exposure by operating across the entire gas value chain, Siddiqui added.

XRG is weighing options to create a business that would meet rising global demand for liquefied natural gas and the growing US demand to power data centres, the report said.

Potential investments could include everything from “getting gas out of the ground, owning the pipes and the processing plants and all the way to liquefaction facilities to put gas on water and potentially even owning the re-gas facilities and pipelines to end users in destination countries,” he said.

Asked about XRG’sfinancial capacity given the challenges linked to the Iran war, Siddiqui reaffirmed the company’s commitment to deploy tens of billions of dollars into the US energy value chain.

“This is unwavering, although obviously we will only do that under the right return expectations. The US is a market where we want to be bold.”