The journey of the energy industry, similar to that of a nation, is the interplay of impulse, momentum and terrain. Fifty years have brought the UAE’s energy industry a long way. While some features were set early on, progress has been slowed and hastened by the peaks and valleys of the world economy and politics.
Even before the country’s founding, certain fundamentals were in place. The first oil concession, covering onshore Abu Dhabi, was awarded as far back as 1939 to a multinational consortium of Shell, BP, the forerunners of Total and ExxonMobil, and Partex, the petroleum interests of entrepreneur and art connoisseur Calouste Gulbenkian.
The rapid post-Second World War growth of world oil demand and the huge pre-war discoveries in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia brought attention to the lower Gulf region. The sand dunes and sabkha covering most of Abu Dhabi’s terrain obscured the geology, leading to initial unsuccessful wells until new geophysical methods could map the subsurface structures.