Energy champion

Frank Perez, Head of Global Power, TAQA.

Frank Perez, Head of Global Power at TAQA, discusses the company’s strategy, portfolio and its place in Abu Dhabi business

In 2005 the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company was founded when its IPO was issued on the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange, for the first time allowing investors to own shares in the previously state-owned assets of the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority.

Now an integrated global energy business, TAQA is 75 per cent owned by the Abu Dhabi government, boasts assets of more than $29 billion across 10 countries and is heavily involved in power generation, water, desalination, oil and gas exploration and production, pipelines and gas storage.

Story continues below

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Please click here to comment on this article

Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, TAQA’s recent financial statements make encouraging reading.
Its Q1 revenues, at $1.49 billion, are 15 per cent higher year on year and Q2 revenues tell a similar story. Total revenues for the second quarter of 2011 were $1.93bn, up 38 per cent year on year compared to $1.38bn in Q2 2010.

Of this, power and water revenues - excluding supplemental fuel income - were responsible for $517.2m, up from $435.5m in 2010. This represents a 17 per cent year-on-year increase over 2010, which is largely down to the Fujairah 2 power and desalination plant, transferred to TAQA in the third quarter of 2010 and fully commissioned in January 2011.

“Our strategy of late has been to focus on organic growth and to build from the footprint we have, not only here but within the greater MENA region,” says Frank Perez, head of global power at TAQA. “We then also looked at our platform and rationalised anything that didn’t quite fit the global power and water strategy.”

As a result the company sold its 50 per cent stake in the US-based Marubeni TAQA Caribbean joint venture earlier this year, exiting the $320m conglomerate citing a desire for stronger focus on the greater MENA region and organic growth as part of a long-term plan to increase scale.

“The real focus has been to build an organisation, the headquarters of a global power and water group, here in Abu Dhabi. We’ve effectively succeeded in executing our strategy to build our capability here in Abu Dhabi, and to grow our power and water group in this part of the region.”

TAQA’s global platform currently includes around 16,000 megawatts of electricity, and 800m gallons of water produced per day. “We have a large base that’s growing at a fairly large rate,” says Perez, “We’ve got the relationships that come from being an Abu Dhabi entity, and we have a very positive relationship as an investor in power and water, and an operator.”

Perez is keen to stress that the company’s role as an operator, in addition to an investor, is important.

“We’re not like many other vehicles, we’re an operator of what we invest in,” he says. “TAQA is an energy champion for Abu Dhabi, and within that global power and water is an entity that has the scale, breadth and team organisation to not only invest but to also operate projects.

Operating and creating projects, executing those projects and operating them safely is important, and we run very efficiently creating high availability and safe and reliable operation. All that takes expertise, and we’re still building an organisation and skillsets to deliver that capability long term.”

Currently the sixth largest IPP in the world by gross capacity, the availability of TAQA’s fleet is a source of pride for the company.