UAE pushes ahead with $20bn gas project to boost exports

The UAE will accelerate $20bn of natural-gas projects by awarding contracts for some of them in the coming days, as it seeks to boost exports of the fuel.

Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) will award engineering and construction work for the Dalma gas field in Gulf waters as soon as this week, according to people with the matter. The gas is meant to start flowing by about 2025, they said.

ADNOC is among several major state oil companies increasing production of gas as consumers try to switch away from crude and coal. Gas is a cleaner form of energy, though the industry is still a significant source of carbon and methane emissions.

Dalma will help the UAE, OPEC’s third-biggest oil producer, in its bid to become self-sufficient in gas by 2030. The country will export some surplus supplies as liquefied natural gas, ADNOC chief executive officer Sultan al Jaber said on Monday.

ADNOC declined to comment on the Dalma contracts.

Saudi gas investment
ADNOC could use some of Dalma’s reserves for blue hydrogen, made by converting gas and capturing the carbon-dioxide emissions. The company is investing heavily in manufacturing facilities to export blue hydrogen in the next decade.

Neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is also racing to raise gas output. Saudi Aramco is undertaking a $110bn project to develop the Jafurah field in the east of the kingdom. It will use about half of the gas to make blue hydrogen, and most of the rest for domestic electricity plants, it said last month.

Italy’s Eni, Austria’s OMV and Wintershall of Germany together own a 40 per cent stake in Dalma, while ADNOC holds the rest. In 2018, ADNOC said the field would pump 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas a day and 120,000 barrels of oil.

Eni’s CEO, Claudio Descalzi, hopes ADNOC will make a final investment decision on the larger Hail and Ghasha fields next year, he said to Bloomberg Television this week.

Work on the fields was delayed in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic. ADNOC also canceled a $1.5bn contract for work on Dalma, saying it would be re-tendered. Descalzi said in 2018 that investment in all the gas concessions could total $20bn.

ADNOC exports LNG from Das Island in the Gulf region. It is studying plans to develop an new LNG facility at Fujairah, an oil hub that sits outside the Strait of Hormuz.