ABU DHABI (AFP) – Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil firm ADCO is to invest billions of dollars to hike onshore production by 400,000 barrels per day to 1.8 million bpd by 2017, its general manager Abdel Monim al-Kindy said on Monday.
Initially, the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations expects to invest 5.3 billion dollars between now and 2012, Kindy said at a press conference.
Two 1.5-billion-dollar contracts and another 300-million-dollar contract will be “signed within two weeks” to expand and develop onshore oil fields in the emirate, the wealthiest in the seven-member United Arab Emirates.
ADCO also awarded contracts worth 3.5 billion dollars to foreign oil firms in mid-2009, Kindy said.
Speaking on the sidelines of a three-day oil conference that kicked off in Abu Dhabi on Monday, Kindy said these projects formed part of a strategy to raise overall crude production to 3.5 million bpd from 2.8 million bpd now.
The UAE sits on the world’s fifth largest oil reserves, estimated at 97.8 billion barrels, of which some 95 percent are owned by Abu Dhabi, and also has gas reserves of more than 6,000 billion cubic metres (212 trillion cubic feet).