WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR
Any Saudi Aramco timetable for restarting the East-West pipeline; closing-day announcements from Arabian Travel Market in Dubai; and fresh details on the UAE’s cyber defences after officials disclosed 640,000 attempted attacks in one day.
Good morning from London. Abu Dhabi is drawing some of its biggest assets closer while sending capital further afield. L’IMAD has all but completed its move on AD Ports, XRG has bought into the gas route linking the Caspian to Europe, and a Washington judge has dismissed a $2.8 billion claim against the UAE. Yet oil routes, cloud facilities and government networks still show how much the war has changed the operating environment.
L’IMAD CLOSES IN ON FULL CONTROL OF AD PORTS
L’IMAD will own more than 98.5% of AD Ports Group when its tender offer settles by 9 October.
The Abu Dhabi sovereign investor made the offer through ADQ, which already owned 75.42% of the ports group. Investors tendered more than 23.08% of AD Ports’ shares at Dh6.25 each. Payment and registration are due by 9 October, although routine notifications to the Capital Market Authority and Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange remain outstanding.
AD Ports operates about 40 terminals in the UAE and has a presence in nearly 50 markets. The tender will leave almost all of that network in Abu Dhabi government hands.
The ports are moving closer to home. Abu Dhabi’s energy capital is travelling in the other direction.
ABU DHABI DEEPENS ITS AZERBAIJAN TIES
XRG has completed its purchase of an undisclosed stake in Azerbaijan’s Southern Gas Corridor, a 3,500-kilometre network that carries Caspian gas through Georgia and Türkiye to southern Europe. The corridor can deliver up to 26 billion cubic metres of gas a year.
L’IMAD has also agreed with Azerbaijan Investment Holding to pursue investments in industry, critical minerals, transport, energy and digital links. The two agreements deepen Abu Dhabi’s commercial relationship with Baku and add export infrastructure to XRG’s existing 30% interest in Azerbaijan’s Absheron gasfield.
As Abu Dhabi added assets overseas, a Washington court removed a large claim against the state.
UAE DEFEATS $2.8BN LAWSUIT
A US federal judge has dismissed oil trader Hazim Nada’s lawsuit accusing the UAE of directing a campaign that drove his company, Lord Energy, into bankruptcy. Nada sought about $2.8 billion from defendants including the UAE, President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Swiss private intelligence firm Alp Services.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the UAE was immune under the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. She dismissed the Swiss defendants for lack of personal jurisdiction and the claim against an American academic for failure to state a claim. The court did not decide whether the alleged campaign occurred.
Nada told Bloomberg that he was disappointed and was considering an appeal.
The judgment closes one threat in Washington. The pressure on Gulf energy routes remains unresolved.
OIL SLIPS AS INVENTORIES RISE
Brent fell below $108 a barrel on Wednesday after US crude inventories unexpectedly rose by 7.1 million barrels in the week to 11 September. Analysts surveyed by Reuters had expected a draw of about 1.6 million barrels.
The fall came despite the shutdown of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline after last Friday’s attack. The line had been moving about 4 million barrels a day to the Red Sea, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright expects flows to resume within days, but Reuters sources offered estimates ranging from an earlier partial restart to five or six weeks of repairs.
The price move suggests traders are weighing the American stock build more heavily than an outage whose length nobody has yet established.
Pipelines carry oil around the Strait. Cloud networks were meant to route data around local failures, until the war exceeded their design.
AWS CANNOT RECOVER ONE UAE ZONE
Amazon Web Services says it cannot restore access to resources and data held only in mec1-az2, one of the three availability zones in its UAE cloud region, after wartime damage. AWS is still working on the region’s other two zones.
The episode gives the UAE’s planned expansion in artificial intelligence a practical warning: customers must spread critical workloads across separate zones or regions if they want them to survive the loss of one site.
The war damaged one part of the UAE’s cloud infrastructure. Its networks are also absorbing hundreds of thousands of attempted intrusions.
UAE BLOCKS 640,000 CYBERATTACKS
The UAE countered more than 640,000 cyberattack attempts in a single day, Mohamed Al Kuwaiti, head of the UAE Cybersecurity Council, told the Arab Media Summit. He said one attempt targeted data held by a private company that supports the government.
The number counts attempted attacks, not successful breaches. It nevertheless shows the pressure on the systems behind government services and critical infrastructure.
Security dominated the large systems. At Arabian Travel Market, the deals were smaller but immediately useful to travellers.
EMIRATES SIGNS 11 ATM AGREEMENTS
Emirates signed 11 agreements on the second day of Arabian Travel Market, covering seven destinations as well as distribution, employee travel and airline partnerships.
The carrier renewed tourism agreements with Sri Lanka and the Maldives, signed new arrangements with Ras Al Khaimah and Japan, and agreed with Kuwait Airways to expand their interline relationship into a reciprocal codeshare. A separate agreement with the Philippines’ Overseas Workers Welfare Administration covers repatriation, welfare and livelihood support for Filipino workers.
Emirates is widening the journeys it can sell. Abu Dhabi is examining how passengers might complete more of them by rail.
ETIHAD STUDIES AIRPORT CONNECTION
Etihad Airways and Etihad Rail will study better connections between Mohamed bin Zayed City station and Zayed International Airport. The agreement covers shuttle services, integrated air-and-rail booking and station-based passenger services; it does not yet commit the companies to build a railway into the terminal.
The distinction matters. For now, the project is a study of the final link between the national railway and Abu Dhabi’s airport, not a confirmed rail-to-terminal line.
One proposed connection would join rail and air. Meta’s latest offer joins four familiar apps behind a menu of subscriptions.
META CHARGES FOR APP EXTRAS
Meta has launched optional subscriptions across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Meta AI in the UAE. The basic apps remain free.
WhatsApp Plus costs Dh5.99 a month, while Instagram Plus and Facebook Plus cost Dh7.99 each. The cross-platform Core package starts at Dh22.99 and adds higher limits for AI image and video tools. Creator and business plans range from Dh46.99 to Dh1,199 a month.
The Dh5.99 headline is therefore the price of WhatsApp Plus, not an all-app Meta One bundle.
BEFORE TOMORROW
Thursday brings the final day of Arabian Travel Market, another Asian oil session and perhaps a firmer answer from Saudi Aramco on the East-West pipeline. The most important number may be a date: when the line can carry crude to Yanbu again.
Thank you for reading Emirates Wire. If someone forwarded this edition to you, please subscribe; and if there is a story, correction or tip that belongs in tomorrow’s brief, send it to steve@emirateswire.co.uk.
Enough for one morning. Have a good Thursday, and welcome back tomorrow.
— Steve
Steve Moore
Emirates Wire · launched 9 September 2026 at the National Liberal Club, London
emirateswire.co.uk · steve@emirateswire.co.uk
AI tools help with research aggregation and early drafting. I check every fact against primary sources, and I read and approve every sentence before it goes out. I don't publish anything I haven’t personally stood behind.