Abu Dhabi’s Supreme Petroleum Council announced significant growth in oil and gas reserves, as well as unconventional gas discoveries.
The council noted a 7bn stock tank barrels (stb) increase in oil, 58trn standard cubic feet (scf) increase in conventional gas reserves, and announced the discovery of 160tscf of unconventional gas.
The nation’s total reserves are 105bstb of recoverable oil and 273tscf of conventional gas. With this announcement, the UAE now has the sixth largest reserves of oil and gas globally, up from its previous position at seventh place.
“We are very pleased and honoured to have enabled the UAE to move from the seventh to the sixth-largest oil and gas reserves in both global rankings,” said ADNOC Group CEO Sultan Al Jaber. “These achievements underscore ADNOC’s drive to ensure we remain a trusted, reliable and responsible supplier of energy to the world for decades to come. Crucially, the discovery of substantial unconventional recoverable gas resources, for the first time, marks an important milestone in the development of the UAE’s unconventional resources as we execute our integrated gas strategy.”
Sheikh Mohamed said that this reinforces the UAE’s role in ensuring a secure supply of energy to global customers.
Last year, ADNOC announced its integrated gas strategy to pursue gas self-sufficiency and potentially transform the UAE into a net exporter of the hydrocarbon. As part of that strategy, it is developing the Hail, Ghasha and Dalma mega-project that taps into Abu Dhabi’s Arab formation, which is estimated to hold many trillions of cubic feet of recoverable gas. The project is expected to produce more than 1.5bn cubic feet of gas per day around the middle of the next decade.
ADNOC will also unlock other sources of gas, which include Abu Dhabi’s gas caps and unconventional gas reserves, as well as new natural gas accumulations, which will continue to be appraised and developed as the company pursues its exploration activities. ADNOC’s unconventional resources are expected to produce 1bn standard cubic feet of gas per day, before 2030, while the development of its gas caps is expected to produce an additional 500mn standard cubic feet of gas per day for processing by 2030, from its Umm Shaif gas cap.
