The signing of the deal took place during the visit of Sheikh Khalid bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, to New Delhi
In a first, India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for civil nuclear cooperation. The deal between the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) and the ENEC (Emirates Nuclear Energy Company)-led Barakah Nuclear Power Plant Operations and Maintenance took place during the Indian visit of Sheikh Khalid bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
During the August 2015 visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the UAE, both countries had agreed to cooperate in “peaceful use of nuclear energy”, including in areas of “safety, health, agriculture, and science and technology.” Diplomatic sources pointed out that nothing like the agreement between the NPCIL and the ENEC had been signed before. The NPCIL-ENEC agreement is part of the UAE’s policy of expanding investments into the nuclear energy sector.
Trilateral cooperation
Monday’s MoU is the result of nuclear cooperation-related discussion between India and the UAE spanning a few years. On September 19, 2022, Foreign Ministers of France, India and the United Arab Emirates met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and launched a trilateral cooperation format. This meeting was followed by a phone call among the three Ministers on February 4, 2023. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said following the three-party phone call that all three sides had agreed that the trilateral initiative “will serve as a forum to promote the design and execution of cooperation projects in the fields of energy, with a focus on solar and nuclear energy.”
The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Khaled Bin Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan was earlier in the day hosted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House in New Delhi.
LNG supply
Apart from the nuclear cooperation-related MoU, the two sides signed an MoU for long-term LNG supply between Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and Indian Oil Corporation Limited. A third agreement between ADNOC and India Strategic Petroleum Reserve Limited (ISPRL) was also one of the outcomes during the visit of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. Urja Bharat and ADNOC signed a Production Concession Agreement for Abu Dhabi Onshore Block 1. The fifth MoU was between the Government of Gujarat and Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company PJSC (ADQ) on food parks development in India. India and the UAE are part of the I2U2 grouping that includes Israel and the United States under which food parks in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh were envisaged. The food parks-related MoU in Gujarat is being viewed as an extension of that grouping.