ADNOC Drilling is ready to expand the United Arab Emirates' oil production capacity beyond its current target of five million barrels per day (bpd) by 2027 if given 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, when asked if the company was ready for a boost should the UAE request it.
The UAE, which quit OPEC on May 1 to free itself from production quotas, could boost its output capacity to six 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 Persian Gulf stemming from the US-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 per cent 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.
ADNOC Drilling's tech-focused joint venture Enersol spent roughly $800 million on four acquisitions in 2024, leaving it with around $700 million for other potential targets.
Salem said the company's target to deploy the remaining funds by 2027 is largely the same, though will depend on factors including valuations, which in the energy industry have surged along with oil prices.
(Reporting by Yousef Saba; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
