Arabian Post Staff -Dubai
The final investment decision, announced on Monday at the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi, clears the way for the company’s first large-scale unconventional gas development. ADNOC expects production to continue for 25 years and says capacity could eventually increase to one billion standard cubic feet a day.
Gas extracted from the development will undergo processing at the site before entering the UAE’s gas network through newly constructed pipelines. The additional supply is intended to serve domestic industries and support ADNOC’s plans to expand liquefied natural gas exports.
The company did not disclose the investment cost, the detailed construction timetable or contracts for the full development in its announcement. The 2029 production target and any subsequent expansion remain projections rather than operating output.
Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and ADNOC managing director and group chief executive, described the decision as an important step in developing Abu Dhabi’s gas resources. He said the investment would reinforce energy security, support industrial activity and help meet demand in domestic and overseas markets.
The development will be delivered by ADNOC Onshore under a design-build-operate model. That arrangement covers the design, construction and operation of the project, following technical studies, field testing and analysis of underground formations undertaken to assess the resources and reduce development risks.
ADNOC said the project would combine subsurface expertise with artificial intelligence-enabled drilling and well-completion technologies. Such systems are intended to assist with extracting gas from geological formations that generally require more complex production methods than conventional reservoirs.
The company has identified Ruwais Diyab as a foundation for a larger unconventional gas business. Its stated ambition is to establish a development model that can be expanded as further resources are evaluated, although it has not announced a timetable for increasing output beyond the initial production target.
The planned supply will also feed into ADNOC’s wider gas operations, including ADNOC Gas, which processes and markets gas for customers within the UAE and internationally. Additional domestic production could help the group balance industrial requirements with its commitments to overseas buyers.
ADNOC’s gas expansion programme includes the separate Ruwais liquefied natural gas project, designed for annual production capacity of 9.6 million tonnes. That facility is expected to begin commercial production in the second half of 2028. The two developments have different production schedules and functions, with Ruwais Diyab focused initially on extracting and processing raw gas.
The company has also approved further investment in its rich-gas development programme, reflecting its efforts to increase processing capacity alongside upstream supply. These investments are intended to provide additional gas for power generation, manufacturing and export-related activities as demand grows.
ADNOC estimates that the UAE possesses 298 trillion standard cubic feet of conventional gas reserves and 160 trillion standard cubic feet of unconventional gas resources. Those figures describe different resource categories and should not be treated as equivalent measures of commercially recoverable supply.
Unconventional gas is generally held in geological formations where extraction requires specialised drilling and completion techniques. Commercial development depends on reservoir characteristics, well productivity, infrastructure requirements and operating costs, making field testing particularly important before a large production programme begins.
The company has linked stronger domestic gas availability to increasing requirements from industrial facilities and data centres, including infrastructure used for artificial intelligence. However, it has not specified how much Ruwais Diyab production will be allocated to customers or sectors. Nor has it published a forecast of sales volumes from the development. Raw gas production figures do not necessarily equal the volume of marketable gas delivered, because processing removes impurities and separates other components before supply reaches customers through the national network.
Ruwais Diyab’s development follows earlier appraisal and production work in the concession. The project is located west of Abu Dhabi city, near the Ruwais industrial area, where existing energy infrastructure provides a base for gas processing and transportation.
ADNOC said its planning had included a programme of subsurface analysis and field tests conducted by ADNOC Onshore. The company has not provided a breakdown of how much of the prospective one billion cubic feet daily capacity would be developed in later stages.
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