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Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (Adnoc) will maintain spending at $150bn over the next five years as it targets growth in production capacity at home and expands internationally.The company’s board approved the capital expenditure plan that’s in line with the previous layout that was announced three years ago. Since then, Abu Dhabi’s biggest oil producer has carved out an international investment business called XRG that is scouring the globe for deals.XRG has boosted its enterprise value to $151bn from $80bn since it was set up about a year ago, Adnoc said in a statement. The unit, which this year got stakes in Adnoc’s listed companies with a total market value exceeding $100bn, aims to become among the world’s top five suppliers of natural gas and petrochemicals, along with the energy needed to meet demand from the AI and tech booms.XRG has also snapped up contracts for liquefied natural gas in the US and Africa, bought into gas fields around the Mediterranean and is in the final stages of a nearly $14bn takeover of German chemical maker Covestro AG.Still, the company’s biggest effort yet fell apart in September when the firm dropped its planned $19bn takeover of Australian natural gas producer Santos Ltd It bounced back with a deal announced this month to explore buying into an LNG project in Argentina.Adnoc’s board, chaired by UAE President and Abu Dhabi ruler Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, reviewed plans to expand oil and gas production capacity. It formed an operating company for the Hail and Ghasha offshore natural gas concession and boosted the project’s production target to 1.8bn cubic feet per day, from 1.5bn, by the end of the decade.Adnoc is in the process of increasing oil production capacity to 5mn barrels a day from 4.85mn a day currently. The UAE’s Opec+’s quota allows it to produce just over 3.4mn barrels a day in December, and raising capacity further would leave more of the capability lying idle.

Abu Dhabi’s five-year-old oil trading arm plans to boost the volume it handles by two thirds in the next few years as it expands internationally, its CEO said.State-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co sees trading as a way to capture greater value from selling fuels produced in the emirate and elsewhere, said Ahmed bin Thalith, chief executive officer of the unit. The next phase of Adnoc Global Trading’s expansion will be an office in Houston in 2027, he said.“In only five years, we’ve established offices in Singapore, in Geneva and, soon to come, in the US,” bin Thalith said in an interview at the company’s office in Abu Dhabi. “This will put us on the global map and this will increase our footprint.” AGT is handling the equivalent of about 1.1mn to 1.2mn barrels of oil a day and aims to expand that to about 2mn barrels a day, he said.Middle Eastern oil producers have for decades dominated global crude markets, traditionally selling their cargoes on long-term contracts. More recently, companies like Adnoc and Saudi Aramco have been setting up and expanding trading operations as growing domestic refining capacity gave them access to higher-value products such as diesel that can be sold into new markets like Europe.Expanding to the US with a Houston office in 2027 will help achieve its volume targets, bin Thalith said. AGT has started a petrochemicals trading desk and will expand it as Adnoc builds its presence in that industry internationally and with plants on the US Gulf coast, he said.“Once you tap into a market such as the US where most of the products are exported, then that will give you a big boost,” he said.AGT is a joint venture between Adnoc, Italy’s Eni SpA and Austria’s OMV AG. Those partners also operate the emirate’s refinery at Ruwais on the Arabian Gulf coast, with capacity to process more than 900,000 barrels of crude a day. Some of the refinery’s gasoline, diesel and jet fuel is used domestically, but the majority goes for export.“We own the full value chain, from the well all the way to the distribution, and trading comes in and takes advantage of the whole operation,” bin Thalith said. “When you have one of the biggest refineries in the world behind you, that’s a very good thing to start with” and helped the trader be profitable “from day one,” he said.Adnoc and Saudi Aramco are both expanding their trading units in an effort to maximise profits and replicate the success of international firms such as Shell Plc and BP Plc. Another business called Adnoc Trading that’s wholly owned by the Middle Eastern producer, deals in crude oil and liquefied natural gas.International oil companies have long profited from selling on the open market crude from fields they operate and fuels from their own refining networks. That business, known as trading the system, gives the oil companies a base around which to buy and sell fuels produced by others, create hedges and react to market opportunities, a model the Middle Eastern producers are seeking to follow.“If you look at other companies that have those mega systems, they have a ratio of one system barrel to three non-system barrels,” bin Thalith said. “So we’d like to reach that point.” Regional rival Aramco Trading moved 7.3mn barrels a day of crude oil and refined products in 2024. Vitol Group the world’s largest independent trader, had a similar volume last year.Some traders have struggled make money this year due to price volatility caused by geopolitics rather than pure market fundamentals.“People confuse volatility with uncertainty and they’re not the same,” bin Thalith said. “Uncertainty is something like sanctions, like trade wars, that you don’t know when it’s going to end and it impacts you in a way that is different than the normal movement of the market.”