When your name is what you do, corporate identity can get lost

Not many local companies, it seems, subscribe to that strategy, while the region’s energy firms apparently seek safety in numbers.

In the UAE, a corporate name is often a blunt description of the enterprise’s main activity. Takreer, the refining arm of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), is Arabic for “refining”; Tabreed is not only the name of the UAE’s district cooling company but also means “making cold”; Esnaad, the ADNOC oil and gas services subsidiary, means “support”; Aldar, the Abu Dhabi property developer, translates as “the dwelling”; Etisalat is Arabic for “communications” and also the name of the Abu Dhabi phone company; Chemaweyaat, the alternative name of the Abu Dhabi National Chemicals Company, just means “chemicals”.

A few names of Abu Dhabi businesses are more poetic:

• Masdar, alias Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, means “source”. It is the emirate’s clean energy flagship.
• Mubadala Development, a strategic investment company owned by the Abu Dhabi Government, takes its name from an Arabic word meaning “reciprocity”, derived from “badal” the verb “to exchange”.
• Then there is Taqa, which when inscribed in elegant Arabic calligraphy in the shape of a horse’s head denotes the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company. Unsurprisingly, considering that the company mainly owns and operates power plants, “taqa” means “energy”.

If every other Arab nation took a similar approach to corporate identity, we might find duplicates across the region. This is a reality in Taqa’s case, causing no end of confusion.

As well as the Taqa controlled by the Abu Dhabi Government, there is Taqa, the Saudi government-private sector joint venture otherwise known as Industrialisation and Energy Services Company. Established by ministerial decree in 2003, it is primarily an oil and gas services group. One of the Saudi Taqa’s subsidiaries, providing fabrication, maintenance and repair services for the offshore oil and gas sector, is named Taqa Al-Rushaid.

The Abu Dhabi Taqa is also in the business of oil and gas. It pumps both in the North Sea and Canada, owns North Sea production platforms and pipelines, and is building a big gas storage facility in Holland. Imagine, then, the confusion accompanying the following corporate announcements:

“Taqa participated in the third OPEC summit and international oil exhibition”; “Taqa acquires equity stake in Oman’s Sohar Aluminium Company”; “Taqa assigned Samba as the lead manager and financial adviser”; “Taqa continues to strengthen leadership team”; and “Taqa to offset all business travel greenhouse gas emissions with atmosfair”.

Congratulations if you flawlessly and unhesitatingly assigned each release to the issuing corporation without having to visit the company websites.

It gets worse.

There is a Cairo-based Taqa Arabia, established four years ago by the Egyptian private equity firm Citadel Capital. It operates in the MENA region’s oil, gas and power sectors, giving it considerable overlap with the operating areas of the region’s other two Taqas. A distinguishing feature of the Egyptian group is its chain of Taqa-branded petrol stations.

Spot the Taqa Arabia announcements among the following headlines: “Taqa concentrated solar power plant feasibility study”; “Taqa forays into Morocco renewable energy sector”; “Taqa announces start-up of Berber power plant”; “Taqa eyeing oil and gas investments in Iraq and Qatar”; “Taqa, Asec float JV in Sudan”. (Hint: There are a couple of red herrings.)

Another favourite name in the Arab Gulf states is “Dana”, from the local word for an especially large, perfect, creamy-white pearl. Hence, in Sharjah, there is Dana Gas, the UAE’s first publicly traded company focused on the gas sector. Dana produces most of its gas in Iraqi Kurdistan and Egypt. It has also discovered an oilfield in southern Egypt.

By what may simply be coincidence, there is an unrelated Dana Petroleum based in Aberdeen, the Scottish oil capital. As one might expect, it operates mainly in the North Sea.

Guess which company published this press release: “Dana makes strategic acquisition in Egypt”. (Hint: It was not the obvious candidate.)

Speaking of pearls, there are far too many energy enterprises with “Pearl” in their names. For a start there is the Pearl Petroleum joint venture in Kurdistan, in which Dana Gas holds a 40 per cent interest. Then there is Pearl GTL in Qatar, the Shell-Qatar Petroleum joint venture that operates the world’s biggest gas-to-liquids plant.

So far, thank goodness, I have not been called upon to cover developments involving Bangkok-based Pearl Oil, Jakarta-based Pearl Oil Tungkal, or the Canadian oil juniors Pearl Exploration and BlackPearl Resources. There is also a Pearl Gas group in the US.

Stringing all those pearls would be a challenge.