Adnoc doubles carbon capture target to 10m tonnes

Abu Dhabi Media Office

• Operations produce 24m tonnes a year
• Occidental helping to evaluate potential
• $15bn being invested in decarbonisation

Adnoc, the UAE’s biggest oil producer, plans to capture 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually by 2030, up from a previous target of 5 million tonnes.

The announcement was made on Sunday, ahead of Adnoc hosting its main annual oil conference, Adipec, this week as the country prepares to host the UN Cop28 summit in November and December this year. 

Adnoc’s executive committee, chaired by Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, approved the plan as part of the company’s strategy to have net zero emissions from its own operations by 2045.

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The company produces 24 million tonnes of CO2 annually at its own upstream oil and gas production operations. 

Adnoc on September 6 approved a new carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) project that will triple its annual carbon capture capacity.

The project at its Habshan gas processing plant will be able to permanently store 1.5 million tonnes a year (mpta) of CO2 in subterranean rock below the site.

On completion, it will become the second-largest carbon capture project in the Gulf. The largest is at a Qatar Gas liquefaction plant. Habshan will triple Adnoc’s carbon capture capacity to 2.3 mtpa, which is the equivalent of removing 500,000 petrol-powered cars from the road each year.

The company’s long-standing target is to increase this to 5 mtpa by 2030, which it says will provide the same amount of carbon capture as a forest twice the size of the UAE.

Adnoc and US oil company Occidental on August 1 signed a “strategic collaboration agreement” to evaluate potential investments in carbon capture and storage hubs in the UAE and the US.

The Abu Dhabi company plans to invest an initial $15 billion in decarbonisation projects.

CCUS attempts to find uses for the captured carbon rather than simply storing it.

Saudi Arabia aims to raise its CCUS capacity to 44 mtpa by 2035, according to a May 2023 report by The King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center.

The broader Middle East is home to nearly 5 percent of announced CCUS projects worldwide and is ranked fifth in terms of planned and operational CCUS facilities, according to a report by energy consultancy Rystad.