Two major Abu Dhabi sovereign funds - International Petroleum Investment Co. (IPIC) and Mubadala Development Company PJSC - will come together to create an alliance with assets of approximately US$125 billion.
The move by the biggest sheikhdom in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates comes as a cost-cutting measure in reaction to the low prices of the commodity in the global market. (The price of Brent crude yesterday reached US$47.56 per barrel, which is a steep drop from the approximately US$110 a barrel around two years ago).
The new fund would hold a debt of around US$42 billion yet its assets would be more than twice the size of Russia's Reserve Fund.
In addition, the alliance would purportedly create an output of oil greater than that of Libya, which last month reached a bit over 207,000 barrels per day according to the chairman of the OPEC member's national oil company.
IPIC's investments are found around the world, but mainly focus on the energy sector. IPIC has owned Spanish energy company CEPSA since 2011, a minority stake in Japanese refining and marketing company Cosmo Oil, and 64 percent control of Austrian petrochemical company Borealis.
Mubadala does have an eponymous oil and gas exploration and production firm with interests in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It also has interests in a variety of sectors including EMI Music Publishing, the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and aircraft composite parts maker Strata Manufacturing.
Khaldoon Khalifa al-Mubarak, the chief executive of Mubadala, did not rule out more mergers and acquisitions by Abu Dhabi.
"When the benefits of a merger are clear, it is in the interests of owners. We are in a competitive world and size matters, and the more competitive capability we form would be in the interest of concerned companies," said al-Mubarak in an interview with Sky News Arabia.
By Erwin Cifuentes for Oilprice.com
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Erwin Cifuentes is a Contributing Editor for Southern Pulse Info where he focuses on politics, economics and security issues in Latin America and the Caribbean.… More