Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) and artificial intelligence company G42 have signed a landmark agreement with OpenAI to integrate advanced AI capabilities across ADNOC’s operations, marking a major step in the application of frontier AI technology to the energy industry.
The agreement was announced at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC), as OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman visited the United Arab Emirates.
The partnership aims to connect artificial intelligence across ADNOC’s operations, enabling more integrated decision-making in production, processing, refining, logistics, sales and trading.
ADNOC intends to use OpenAI’s advanced technology to improve operational efficiency, strengthen commercial planning and support investment decisions across its business.
The company will deploy the technology using OpenAI’s GPT models on computing infrastructure operated by G42 within the UAE. The arrangement is designed to combine advanced AI capabilities with ADNOC’s industrial expertise and proprietary operational data.
One of the partnership’s initial priorities is field master planning. The system will bring together decades of information covering thousands of wells, multiple reservoirs and hundreds of surface facilities to support the development of more comprehensive field plans.
The partners also plan to apply AI to oil valuation and commercial planning. The technology will help connect forecasts of crude oil supply, demand, prices and margins with operational decisions across ADNOC’s value chain.
According to ADNOC, the approach is intended to help the company assess the commercial implications of decisions more quickly and identify opportunities to improve the value generated from its resources.
The agreement also includes cooperation on cybersecurity through OpenAI’s Daybreak Blue initiative, which is intended to help security teams identify vulnerabilities and strengthen the protection of critical energy infrastructure.
ADNOC said the partnership builds on its existing AI strategy, which includes more than 200 AI applications and 70 robotics use cases deployed or under development.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said advanced AI could help address complex challenges in industries such as energy, where computing infrastructure and physical resources are increasingly interconnected.
The signing was witnessed by Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council.
The partnership reflects the UAE’s broader strategy to expand AI adoption across strategic industries and strengthen its position as a global centre for artificial intelligence development and deployment.
Financial terms of the ADNOC agreement were not disclosed. The partners said the initial applications would focus on improving field development planning and connecting operational and commercial intelligence across the energy value chain.
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