Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company has taken a major strategic step in the US energy market by agreeing to acquire a stake in its first natural gas production and export projects in the US. Less than a month after the Emirates pledged to invest $1.4 trillion in the US over 10 years, Mubadala Energy has officially announced its acquisition of Kimmeridge SoTex HoldCo LLC, a private company with a true gas twin asset: current production in Texas and a future LNG terminal in Louisiana, Bloomberg has reported.
The deal involves the acquisition of 24% of SoTex HoldCo, for an undisclosed amount. The company controls Kimmeridge Texas Gas, which already produces more than 500 million cubic meters of gas per year. feet of gas per day, and Commonwealth LNG, which is preparing a final investment in a 9.3 million tons/year export plant, with a launch in the 2030s. In a global context, this is part of a much broader strategic shift in which the Emirates is increasing its presence in the US not only through financial injections into technology, but also through control over molecules – that is, real energy resources.
SoTex and LNG
The investment in SoTex HoldCo opens the door for Mubadala to one of the most dynamic niches in the American energy industry – LNG exports from the Gulf Coast, which is already transforming global markets. In addition to production in Texas, where the company plans to triple capacity to 1.5 billion cubic feet/day by 2031, a key asset is the Commonwealth LNG project, which gives the Emirates direct access to export infrastructure.
The move is linked to a geopolitical signal: last month, President Donald Trump and Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser, met in Washington, D.C., which resulted in a pledge to invest trillions in the U.S. — not just in energy, but in AI, semiconductors, and advanced manufacturing. In that sense, a stake in SoTex is not just a portfolio asset, but an entry point for a long-term transformation of the global gas chain, where the UAE intends to play a prominent role.
Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.
Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) is not standing aside — it is also preparing its first upstream deals in the U.S. to complement its recent acquisitions of chemical capacity and LNG infrastructure. In 2024, Adnoc entered the NextDecade Corp. project in Texas, signing a 20-year supply contract, which was its first acquisition in the U.S. Now in focus is ExxonMobil’s hydrogen venture and the potential acquisition of Mubadala’s energy portfolio.
Adnoc has become one of the most active forces in the global energy M&A market, spanning deals from the US to Africa. Mubadala, for its part, manages $330 billion in AUM, and its strengthening in LNG could become a platform for the two national giants to join forces to shape a new wave of UAE investment in the US “real economy”. In the context of the global energy transformation, these moves put Abu Dhabi at the forefront of a post-oil era, where natural gas and hydrogen are the currencies of the new geoeconomy.