ADNOC chief Sultan al-Jaber said on Tuesday the state oil company of the United Arab Emirates was looking to grow its U.S. energy investments six-fold to $440 billion in the next 10 years.
“For us, the United States is not just a priority; it is an investment imperative,” Jaber told an audience at a Washington event, adding that AI represented a once-in-a-generation investment opportunity.
Jaber pointed to the UAE’s recent anchor investment in the largest liquefied natural gas plant in Texas, investments in petrochemical plants across the U.S. and a planned addition of 5.5 gigawatts of renewable energy and storage “from coast to coast.”
He also said that UAE renewable energy firm Masdar and investment arm XRG have just opened an office in Washington, and called investment in the U.S. an “investment imperative.”
Last month, during President Donald Trump’s visit to Abu Dhabi, the U.S. and the wealthy Gulf state unveiled a massive artificial intelligence campus project set to contain a cluster of powerful data centers.
In March, when senior UAE officials met Trump, the UAE had committed to a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework in the U.S. in sectors including energy, AI and manufacturing to deepen reciprocal ties.
Jaber said at the Washington event that the two countries should work toward a “coordinated roadmap” to ramp up AI development.
Mariam Almheiri, chair of the UAE international affairs office and CEO of 2PointZero, a UAE investment platform, said partnership with the U.S. across the AI supply chain is essential.
“The whole idea is scale, and it’s so important to understand that time is not on our side,” she said at the event.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Maha El Dahan; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)