ADNOC Records About 100 Million Cubic Feet a Day from Ruwais Diyab Gas
Key Facts
Production at the Ruwais Diyab concession reached about 100 million cubic feet a day in February 2025, according to the MEES website, citing TotalEnergies’ CEO, signaling that Abu Dhabi’s unconventional gas development had moved into actual production. The executive said output was “about 100 million cubic feet a day currently” at the time. This comes within a broader program that ADNOC Drilling expects to reach 300 million standard cubic feet a day, with a higher target of 1 billion cubic feet a day. These estimates relate to the unconventional program and are not achieved figures for Ruwais Diyab alone. ADNOC says its unconventional gas program is part of its integrated strategy to achieve gas self-sufficiency in the UAE.
Gas deliveries from the concession began in November 2020, two years after ADNOC and Total signed the concession agreement, according to an ADNOC statement at the time. The company said the first gas was transported through a dedicated pipeline and a central early production facility at the Diyab field, allowing it to be fed into its gas network. This marked a shift from a development agreement to actual supply, while the production figure of about 100 million cubic feet a day remains tied to the February 2025 statement. ADNOC describes unconventional gas as trapped in tight geological formations, requiring advanced extraction techniques. These include hydraulic fracturing, along with AI-enabled digital drilling tools, according to the company.
The first phase program included 144 wells, of which 34 had been drilled by the end of the first quarter of 2025, according to an ADNOC Drilling disclosure. This progress gives an indication of the scale of drilling work associated with the development, but does not by itself specify each well’s output or its contribution to concession production. The company said well delivery time had fallen to about 20 days, and that several wells had been completed in less than 15 days. These timeframes reflect the pace of execution the company reported in its update for the first quarter of the same year. ADNOC Drilling’s Turnwell project, a joint venture with SLB and Patterson-UTI, participated in work at Ruwais Diyab, according to ADNOC.
The program’s national backdrop dates to November 2019, when the Supreme Petroleum Council announced 160 trillion standard cubic feet of recoverable unconventional gas resources, according to ADNOC’s official page. This figure differs from daily production: it is an estimate of recoverable resources, not an amount produced or a current flow into the gas network. A year later, ADNOC announced the first gas delivery from Ruwais Diyab, while ADNOC Drilling’s 2025 update pointed to an expected program output of 300 million standard cubic feet a day, with a target of up to 1 billion cubic feet a day. These figures represent different stages in the development of the project and program, from resource estimates to the start of deliveries and then target production levels. ADNOC links the expansion of unconventional gas to its goal of strengthening UAE self-sufficiency.
ADNOC says the program could expand, once its potential is fully developed, to more than 300 wells a year across Abu Dhabi. This remains a future expansion plan as described in the company’s statement, with no specific date for reaching that rate in the available information. The latest specific production figure for Ruwais Diyab in the evidence dates to February 2025, when Total’s CEO said it had reached about 100 million cubic feet a day. The evidence gives no dated timeline for the concession’s next step or a more recent figure for its standalone output. The 1 billion cubic feet a day target places the program within efforts to develop domestic gas supplies, but does not establish that this level has already been achieved at Ruwais Diyab.