Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate in the United Arab Emirates, is set to award almost $2 billion in onshore oil service contracts as part of an effort to boost crude production capacity to 3.5 million barrels a day by 2018, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. State-controlled Abu Dhabi Co. for Onshore Oil Operations, or Adco, aims to award a $1.5 billion engineering and construction contract at the Bab and Qusahwira fields this month, Abdul Munim Saif al-Kindy, general manager of the company, said Monday. It will award a $300 million contract for development of the Bida Al Qemzan area, he said at a seminar for the company's partners and contractors. Gulf producers are seeking to increase capacity on expectation demand will recover after the global economic slump crimped fuel consumption. Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer, has expanded its capacity to more than 12 million barrels a day and kept a third of that idle amid low demand. Adco will raise its sustainable production capacity to 1.8 million barrels a day from 2017 from about 1.4 million barrels a day, Al-Kindy said. The rest of the output increase to reach the emirate's 3.5 million barrel-a-day capacity goal will come from offshore fields operated by other units of state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., Adco's biggest shareholder.
