COP28 president Sultan Al-Jaber’s company will become the second largest oil producer on Earth. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the fossil fuel firm ran by COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, is on course to become the second largest oil producer in the world by 2050 – including state-run and publicly listed operators – according to new Global Witness analysis.  

As president of COP28, the annual UN-backed climate summit which this year takes place in Dubai, Al-Jaber is charged with shepherding nations towards more ambitious climate action through sweeping emissions cuts in order to keep the 1.5C Paris Agreement temperature goal within grasp.  

Yet the company that he leads plans to produce billions of barrels of oil for decades to come, and it is projected to undertake one of the most aggressive production expansions of any operator by 2030– the year by which both the UN’s climate science body, and Al-Jaber himself, say greenhouse gas emissions must fall by 43 percent by 2030 in order to keep the 1.5C goal within reach. 

Using industry data sourced from Rystad Energy, we calculate that assets operated by ADNOC are projected to produce 35.9 billion barrels of oil between the start of 2023 and the end of 2050. Only Saudi Aramco (100.5 billion barrels) is projected to produce more operated oil than ADNOC by mid-century. 

COP28 president Sultan Al-Jaber’s company will become the second largest oil producer on Earth

ADNOC plans to produce more oil than any of the “Big 5” supermajors – ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, TotalEnergies. In fact, its projected output will positively dwarf that of the European majors; ADNOC’s 35.9 billion barrels is 49 percent higher alone than the projected 24.1 billion barrels production of Shell, BP and Total combined.  

As well as the outsized volume of its operated oil production by 2050, ADNOC is also on course to aggressively increase its production in the short term, making it a major global outlier.  

Of the top 30 largest operators globally, only Petrobras (47.5 percent) is set to increase oil production faster by 2030 than ADNOC (41.5 percent). 

The emissions from ADNOC’s operated oil products alone will total more than 14.3 billion tonnes of CO2e by 2050. That’s significantly more than the annual emissions of China, the world’s largest emitter. It also means that ADNOC’s operated oil and gas alone will burn through nearly 6 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget to limit warming at 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

Read more at Globalwitness.org