The UAE’s abrupt departure from Opec and Opec+ last week will open up new opportunities for the country’s upstream sector. As part of Opec, Adnoc’s growth ambitions were constrained by collective responsibility as a series of production quotas since January 2017 increasingly came into conflict with the Abu Dhabi company’s capacity growth agenda (MEES, 1 May).
Over the past decade, the UAE’s production capacity has surged from barely 3mn b/d to a claimed figure of 4.85mn b/d today. The UAE’s last Opec quota for April was 3.429mn b/d, which would have left it with 1.42mn b/d of spare capacity were it not for the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz which limited output to just 2.02mn b/d last month. (CONTINUED - 1608 WORDS)
