Taqa eyes acquisitions of distressed energy firms

By Luke Pachymuthu

DUBAI (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi National Energy Company TAQA.AD is eyeing acquisitions under $1 billion in energy companies struggling to cope with the global financial turmoil, the chief executive said late on Tuesday.

The company, which owns power plants in the United Arab Emirates capital and has oil and gas operations overseas, sees the acquisitions taking place sometime in the fourth quarter of 2008, or the first quarter of 2009, Peter Barker-Homek told Reuters Middle East Investment Summit by phone from Morocco.

"Money is not a problem for us at this point, and most of the acquisitions we are looking at today are those companies who are struggling with either equity or credit," he said.

He said that the current financial climate would not have an impact on the company's growth plans over the next six to nine months, but would have to review these plans if the global economic slowdown extended beyond the second-half of 2009.

"We don't foresee any problems in delivering on our growth plans in the next six to nine months, but if the global recession continues we may have to slow things down," he said. "We should be through the recession sometime at the end of the second quarter of next year."

Barker-Homek said the estimated value of these acquisition targets was under $1 billion, and the company would likely focus on power and desalination projects and pipeline infrastructure in North America.

"We are focused on building our downstream business... in North America, it would be in the Rockies, and Gulf of Mexico," he said.

The company recently reported a five-fold jump in third-quarter net profits on the back of surging oil and gas revenues. Its earnings for the third-quarter jumped to 723 million dirhams ($196.8 million) from 131.9 million a year ago, mainly due to revenues from oil and gas, it said last week.

The company has $23 billion in assets currently and is hoping to more than double that to $60 billion by 2012-2016, he said.

"I'd be disappointed if we were not a $40 billion asset company by 2012."

He added that he expected to see strong fourth-quarter earnings versus the same period in 2007, but declined to be more specific.

MOROCCO, INDIA EXPANSION

Barker-Homek also said that Taqa would invest $2.4 billion in a power expansion and wind farm project in Morocco. The expansion of the power plant from 1200 megawatts to 2500 MW would cost about $2 billion.

"We are hoping to get clearance from the government this year, then it would take between three and four years to build the additional capacity," he said.

The 300-megawatt wind farm project, a strategic-venture with French wind-energy firm Theolia (TEO.PA), should take about 18 months to build.