OPINION | Gulf producers set for investment surge under new OPEC+ mechanism

Abu Dhabi’s national oil company ADNOC said on November 24 it plans to invest $150 billion over the next five years to expand operations. It also increased the UAE’s conventional oil reserve base by six per cent to 120 billion barrels following new discoveries.

ADNOC further seeks to unlock so-called unconventional shale reserves, which it estimates contain 22 billion barrels of oil.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, has a production capacity of 12 million bpd and by far the group’s largest spare capacity, which reached 2.2 million bpd in October, 60 per cent of total OPEC+ spare capacity, according to the IEA.

The country’s national oil company Aramco extracts oil at $2 per barrel, its CEO Amin Nasser recently said, among the lowest in the world.

Aramco, whose capital expenditure is set to reach $52 billion to $55 billion this year, will bring two new fields on stream by year-end, adding 550,000 bpd of production capacity, it said in its third-quarter results. Kuwait and Iraq could also now seek to accelerate investment plans.

Kuwait aims to increase capacity to four million bpd by 2035 from 2.9 million bpd today, based on IEA figures. Iraq is trying to attract foreign investors, including BP and Exxon Mobil, to boost its production capacity by around one million bpd to six million bpd by 2028.