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Summary
- ADNOC Drilling outpaces rig deployment targets
- ADNOC Drilling ready to meet increased demand if required
- Operations unaffected by war disruptions, maintains 98% rig availability in Q1
- Unconventional oil and gas projects advancing
(Reuters) – ADNOC Drilling is ready to expand the United Arab Emirates’ oil production capacity beyond its current target of 5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2027 if the Gulf state gives the green light, the company’s chief financial officer told Reuters on Tuesday.
“We’re ready to deliver any production capacity that ADNOC needs,” Youssef Salem said in an interview, referring to state-owned parent firm the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
The UAE, which quit OPEC on May 1 to free itself from production quotas, could boost its output capacity to 6 million bpd if necessary, Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said last year.
ADNOC Drilling has outpaced the UAE’s accelerated capacity goals, reaching 142 deployed rigs by 2025, well ahead of a previous target of 127 rigs by 2030, Salem said.
“We have multiple providers from China and elsewhere to bring in the rigs, we have the technologies, we have multiple partnerships with Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Patterson, others, we have the teams. So we have everything we need to kind of produce any form of demand from ADNOC,” he said, noting that first-quarter well deliveries rose from a year earlier.
The Abu Dhabi-listed firm has shielded its operations from recent shipping disruptions and tensions in the Gulf stemming from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, he said.
“We had no impact at all from the events,” Salem said. “All the rigs kept working. We kept the availability of 98% of the rigs throughout the quarter.”
To bypass the Strait of Hormuz, the company relies on land routes, the east coast port of Fujairah and a two- to three-month inventory buffer.
ADNOC Upstream CEO Musabbeh al-Kaabi told Reuters this month that the company expects a final investment decision this year on its unconventional gas project with TotalEnergies followed soon after by a call on a separate unconventional oil project with EOG Resources and Petronas.
Drilling is rapidly advancing to support these milestones, Salem said, with nearly 100 first-phase wells completed and more than 60 hydraulically fractured. EOG’s joining the oil project after initial results was a positive signal, he added.
Reporting by Yousef Saba; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus
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