Abu Dhabi’s campaign to cement its long-term market influence is accelerating, with comments reported by Bloomberg this week suggesting its flagship $30bn offshore expansion is running ahead of schedule.

The timeline for expanding the vast Upper Zakum oilfield – the world's second-largest offshore and fourth-largest overall – is being compressed. A key partner is signalling that the project will likely achieve its 1.5mn barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity target well ahead of the 2030 deadline.

Speaking to Bloomberg during the ADIPEC conference, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, a partner in the joint venture with Abu Dhabi’s state-owned producer and Japan’s Inpex Corp., provided a bullish operational update. Woods confirmed the field, currently capable of pumping 1mn bpd, is progressing rapidly toward its next phase.

“The team is working hard to drive production up,” Woods told Bloomberg. He noted the potential for timeline acceleration, saying: “We’ve got an objective that we set by 2030, but I think we can do better than that.”

This operational velocity feeds directly into the UAE's broader strategic goal of elevating its national production capacity from approximately 4.85mn bpd to 5mn bpd by 2027.

However, this rapid expansion of deliverable supply highlights a delicate balancing act for the UAE. While the increased capacity provides significant market “clout,” it creates strategic tension within the OPEC+ alliance. The UAE’s current production is capped at circa 3.4mn bpd under the group's quota system. This restriction, though gradually easing, means that capital-intensive assets, developed at a cost of billions, must remain offline – an occasionally “touchy subject” for stakeholders.

The physical execution of this ambition is a vast, multi-phase engineering programme managed by ADNOC Offshore on behalf of the joint venture, which includes ExxonMobil and Inpex. This consortium has committed around $30bn to the development.

As part of the push to 1.5mn bpd (known as UZ 1.5MMBD), French contractor Technip Energies was awarded the critical pre-front-end engineering and design (pre-FEED) and FEED services contracts.

This follows substantial awards for interim expansion phases, all driving towards the capacity goals highlighted by Exxon's CEO. The main $825mn engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for the UZ 1.2MMBD EPC-1 project was secured by UAE-based Target Engineering Construction Co. This work covers surface facilities across four artificial islands. Target Engineering also secured the subsequent c. $500mn EPC-2 package, underscoring the significant capital deployment by the partners.