Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa), the energy investment holding company, continues to set the acquisitions pace from its position as the majority shareholder in Abu Dhabi’s power and water desalination assets.

Taqa has announced acquisitions worth almost $8 billion in the past six months.
Investing in energy assets across the full value chain literally from the well head to the wall socket both within the region and internationally, Taqa is fast creating a distinctive global utilities and energy powerhouse.
Peter Barker-Homek, the American-born chief executive officer of Taqa, has high-level experience in the global energy and utilities sector having played a key role in the wave of deregulation that came to his native California and into Europe over the past 20 years.
As deregulation and privatisation accelerate throughout the Middle East, Taqa is spearheading an aggressive strategy for growth and diversified investment, a key programme for Abu Dhabi’s global investment and public policy for infrastructure development.
“I can see huge exponential development for Taqa. We are only into our third year of operations but within a decade, the company will be a very different organisation – such is the scale of our ambitions,” says Barker-Homek.
Taqa currently provides more than 85 per cent of the water and electricity produced in Abu Dhabi from an installed power capacity of 7,000 MW and 591 million gallons per day (mgpd) of desalinated water capacity.
Taqa holds a 54 per cent majority stake in six of the nine independent desalinated water and power generating producer assets feeding the Abu Dhabi national grid and transferred from Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity (ADWEA).
Established in June 2005, Taqa is a public stock company with an estimated consolidated asset value of $16 billion and 2,000 employees with 24.9 per cent of its shares traded on the Abu Dhabi Securities Market. A notable entrant into the top listed companies in the GCC, Taqa is majority shareholder of these critical power and water desalination assets.
According to Barker-Homek, the vision of Taqa is to build a global blue chip energy holding company with the longer-term strategy focusing on being the prime provider for Abu Dhabi’s power and water sector.
Simultaneously, Taqa will invest in energy and infrastructure in markets and countries where Abu Dhabi has meaningful political and mutual strategic economic interests. As well as the GCC and Mena, Taqa is targeting North America, Asia, Europe and Africa.
Over the past year, Taqa committed $3 billion to the acquisition of energy related assets including British Petroleum in Holland. In addition, Taqa acquired CMS Generation and ABB’s power generation interests in Morocco, India, Saudi Arabia, Ghana and the UAE. Taqa also has existing partnerships in Saudi Arabia with Zamil Industrial and more investments are in the pipeline.
“We anticipate securing two significant partnerships by the end of 2007 both within the GCC, one is oil related and the other is power related. Taqa is also actively evaluating investments opportunities in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya in the medium term and looking at assets in Pakistan,” says Barker-Homek.
In September, Taqa acquired through Taqa North and its other wholly owned Canadian subsidiaries the PrimeWest Energy Trust in Calgary for $5 billion. PrimeWest is a conventional oil and gas royalty trust that acquires, develops, produces and sells natural gas, crude oil and natural gas liquids.
“This acquisition is a major leap forward for Taqa globally, and an important step towards the achievement of our strategy to grow to more than $20 billion in Canadian assets. This acquisition places Taqa North as one of the top 14 producers in Canada. This acquisition is further evidence of our long-term commitment to Canada which is a key focus for our international expansion,” he adds.
The principal activities of Taqa is to own and invest in companies engaged in power generation, water, energy and infrastructure and as a holding company has no operations of its own.
Barker-Homek accepts that a key challenge for Taqa is the integration of the new acquisitions and optimising the financial transactions into the corporate business culture.
Taqa is working out of the ADWEA building in Abu Dhabi and since its formation has been creating its own distinctive organisation structure.
‘Project Genesis’ is helping speed through change management to align the various subsidiaries with common processes, policies and core business practices that provide financial and operational transparency. The organisational review is supported by international consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
“Taqa’s integration is going well in terms of creating a unified organisational culture and a harmonious business environment. We have a dual purpose approach as we have a good portfolio of businesses and have exposure into other markets and other business practices both regionally and internationally. We are delivering best practices and applying a lot of the smartest and most sophisticated minds not only in the UAE but internationally to build momentum and meet our objectives,” he continues.
“As well as taking our investment strategies to the financial markets and enhancing the performance of our existing assets, we are knitting together our businesses looking at upstream, midstream including pipelines, storage and LNG, and energy and utilities on a global basis,” he concludes.
Barker-Homek has worked for decade in the Middle East and was recently nominated ‘CEO of the Year’ at the Platts 2007 Global Energy Awards.