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Bernard Looney, the former chief executive of BP, has joined the board of XRG, a new company created by Abu Dhabi’s national oil company Adnoc to invest in global energy assets.
Looney was appointed chair last month of a US data centre start-up Prometheus Hyperscale, and is re-entering the energy sector a year after he resigned abruptly from BP over his failure to disclose fully to the board past relationships with female colleagues. The Financial Times reported in July that Looney was in talks over the role.
Adnoc, which has an oil production capacity of 4.85mn barrels a day, said XRG would launch in the first quarter of next year to focus on investments in international gas, the chemical industry and low carbon energy.
It declined to comment further on the new company’s strategy, or funding, but said XRG would have an enterprise value of “over $80bn” and it wanted to double the value of its assets over the next decade.
The seven-man board of directors will be chaired by Sultan Al Jaber, Adnoc’s chief executive, and also includes the UAE’s investment minister, and head of investment fund ADQ, Mohamed Alsuwaidi, the chair of the president’s office for strategic affairs, Ahmed Al Mazrouei, and the chair of Abu Dhabi’s finance department Jasim Al Zaabi.
The two other foreign members of the board will be Jonathan Gray, the chief operating officer of Blackstone, and Egyptian entrepreneur Nassef Sawiris.
Originally planned as a private equity investment vehicle, according to multiple sources, XRG, which Adnoc says will be one of the top five chemicals companies in the world, could include the German chemicals company Covestro and a range of other assets. The board of Covestro approved a €14.7bn takeover offer from Adnoc last month.
One person with knowledge of XRG said “it is going to be a bit of everything”, adding that while it will initially focus on the three key areas it has set out, “the individuals appointed to the board clearly show that this is pivoting beyond that to instances where activities will be a little bit akin to private equity”.
Sawiris declined to comment on the future strategy of XRG.