UAE Speeds Up $20 Billion Natural Gas Projects

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is set to imminently award engineering and construction contracts for a major offshore natural gas field to increase gas production and exports, sources familiar with the plans told Bloomberg on Wednesday.

ADNOC, which pumps nearly all the oil in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is focusing not only on boosting crude oil production capacity, but also on increasing natural gas output to make OPEC’s third-largest producer self-sufficient in gas this decade.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, ADNOC could award the engineering and construction works for the Dalma offshore gas field as soon as this week, with first gas expected in 2025.

Investments in all gas concessions in which Italy’s Eni partners with ADNOC could reach $20 billion, Eni’s chief executive Claudio Descalzi said in 2018, Bloomberg notes.

ADNOC already announced earlier this week a record $6 billion investment to expand its crude oil production capacity to 5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030, from around 4 million bpd now.

The Abu Dhabi company wants to develop the country’s natural gas resources, too, in order to make the UAE self-sufficient in gas and export more of the fuel, especially to the fast-growing Asian markets.  

“The UAE is strengthening its position as a regional leader in natural gas and the emerging blue Hydrogen market,” Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and ADNOC Group CEO, said at the Gastech conference in September.

“Building strong partnerships is at the center of the UAE’s approach to growth and it invites new and existing partners to take advantage of opportunities in its gas businesses,” ADNOC said at the time.

ADNOC’s unit ADNOC LNG has sought expressions of interest from international engineering firms for a planned LNG export terminal at Fujairah, which would deliver the fuel to the key Asian markets, including China, India, Pakistan, and Japan, sources with knowledge of the developments told Upstream last month.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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