Former BP chief Bernard Looney joins board of Abu Dhabi energy group XRG

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Bernard Looney, the previous chief government of BP, has joined the board of XRG, a brand new firm created by Abu Dhabi’s nationwide oil firm Adnoc to spend money on international power belongings. 

Looney was appointed chair final month of a US knowledge centre start-up Prometheus Hyperscale, and is re-entering the power sector a 12 months after he resigned abruptly from BP over his failure to reveal absolutely to the board previous relationships with feminine colleagues. The Monetary Instances reported in July that Looney was in talks over the role.

Adnoc, which has an oil manufacturing capability of 4.85mn barrels a day, mentioned XRG would launch within the first quarter of subsequent 12 months to concentrate on investments in worldwide fuel, the chemical business and low carbon power. 

It declined to remark additional on the brand new firm’s technique, or funding, however mentioned XRG would have an enterprise worth of “over $80bn” and it wished to double the worth of its belongings over the subsequent decade.

The seven-man board of administrators shall be chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, Adnoc’s chief government, and in addition contains the UAE’s funding minister, and head of funding fund ADQ, Mohamed Alsuwaidi, the chair of the president’s workplace for strategic affairs, Ahmed Al Mazrouei, and the chair of Abu Dhabi’s finance division Jasim Al Zaabi. 

The 2 different international members of the board shall be Jonathan Grey, the chief working officer of Blackstone, and Egyptian entrepreneur Nassef Sawiris.

Initially deliberate as a non-public fairness funding automobile, in response to a number of sources, XRG, which Adnoc says shall be one of many prime 5 chemical substances corporations on the planet, might embrace the German chemicals company Covestro and a spread of different belongings. The board of Covestro permitted a €14.7bn takeover offer from Adnoc final month. 

One individual with information of XRG mentioned “it’s going to be a little bit of all the pieces”, including that whereas it should initially concentrate on the three key areas it has set out, “the people appointed to the board clearly present that that is pivoting past that to situations the place actions shall be somewhat bit akin to personal fairness”.

Sawiris declined to touch upon the long run technique of XRG.