Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) began preparing for major disruption to energy supplies 10 to 15 years ago, and the backup infrastructure it built kept production running through the Iran war, a board director said on Thursday, October 15.
“We actually prepared for this scenario in our playbooks 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” Abdulmunim Al Kindy, an ADNOC board director and chairman of the ADIPEC energy exhibition, said at a press conference in Abu Dhabi, The National reported.
Al Kindy said the company invested in backup facilities and interconnections between sites. Those links allowed ADNOC to switch supply sources and delivery destinations when flows were disrupted.
He said some of the projects were built at great expense even though they did not make commercial sense at the time. International partners had questioned the spending, he said.
“We started building all our assets with the redundancy that is required for us to sustain a level of production,” Al Kindy said, according to Gulf News.
He said years of emergency drills and scenario planning gave staff “almost muscle memory” when the crisis came.
Al Kindy also said that losing even part of global supply affects the whole market. If 10% of supply is lost, or people merely believe it is, confidence in prices across the remaining 90% is shaken, he said.
ADNOC has raised its oil production capacity by almost 75% over the past decade to 4.85 million barrels per day. It is targeting 5 million barrels per day by 2027.
Last November, the company approved a spending plan of AED551 billion ($150 billion) for 2026 to 2030 to maintain operations and expand capacity.
ADNOC will host ADIPEC 2026 in Abu Dhabi from November 2 to 5. Organizers expect more than 239,000 visitors from at least 170 countries and 2,250 exhibiting companies, including 353 from Asia.
Last year’s event generated $53 billion in business deals across 49,131 transactions, according to Thomas Loffler, executive vice president at organizer dmg events.
