Great opportunities for UAE-US collaboration in energy sector

Collaboration in several sectors, especially energy, will drive the UAE-US relations as the countries emerge from the pandemic, a top minister said in Abu Dhabi.

Dr Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, pointed out that there is no dearth of opportunities for the US investors to explore in the country.

“Our strategic energy alliance with the US is already very strong. The US was instrumental in bringing peaceful nuclear energy to the UAE as part of the 123 Agreement. And as both our countries emerge from the pandemic, I believe there are great opportunities for collaboration across the energy sector and, I’m sure, across a variety of many other sectors. Starting, though, with energy. We have many concessions and exploration partnerships with many US companies including Exxon, OXY, Baker Hughes, just to name a few,” Dr Al Jaber, Adnoc Group CEO, said during the Global Energy Forum of the Atlantic Council held as part of the ongoing Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week Summit.

The UAE, he said, presents “unique opportunity” for the US firms to cooperate in unconventional oil and gas resources.

“In the near term there is room for deepening this energy cooperation around unconventional oil and gas, which we are currently progressing and discovering here in Abu Dhabi. And it’s very promising and would provide a very special, unique opportunity for American companies to explore such partnership opportunities with us. And there are, of course, very clear opportunities to build on our cooperation and efficiency-enhancing technologies. New energies such as hydrogen, carbon capture and storage. And of course, renewable energy sits very high on our agenda. And I am sure there will be many areas of cooperation in the fields of renewable energy and the mitigation of climate change.”

Dr Al Jaber talking about economic diversification, saw “significant potential” for investment in emerging industrial sectors like manufacturing, biotech, healthcare and agriculture.

“We’ve seen recently many US private equity firms discover the UAE as a stable, well-governed, well-established business-friendly investment administration. And we welcome that. We look for more opportunities like those. In addition, we would like to see more collaboration on artificial intelligence advanced technologies. We would like to see us expand our cooperation between the Mohammed Bin Zayed University for Artificial Intelligence. That could be a very unique opportunity for true long-term strategic partnership in a very important field, like AI,” said Dr Al Jaber, the Special Envoy for Climate Change and Chairman of Masdar.

“In short, there is no shortage of great opportunities for investors from the US to explore here. And I know that these investment opportunities will offer great returns while also making sure that they provide practical progress on helping address global challenges,” Dr Al Jaber added. — ashwani@khaleejtimes.com