The share of offshore reserves will increase from the current 40 per cent to 50 per cent of Abu Dhabi’s total oil production by 2018. An estimated 30 per cent of global oil production comes from offshore oil wells.

The rise in the share of offshore oil output in the emirate will be driven by its strategy to continuously invest in production capacity, cites a report by the UAE state news agency WAM.

The trend of tapping into deep water reserves to meet rising energy demand has been growing in recent years. A report by French international oil company Total in 2014 indicated that deep offshore is believed to contain more than 5 per cent, or 300 billion barrels, of the world’s liquid hydrocarbon resources.

The same report projected that the share of deep water liquid resources of the global conventional production output will be rising from 6 per cent in 2013 to 11 per cent by 2035.

The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has earmarked $25bn in investments over the next five years, in part to underwrite its goal to increase the current output capacity from 2.8 million barrels per day (mbpd) to 3.5 million mbpd by 2017 or 2018.

The sharp oil price decline that began in the second half of 2014 has not so far altered the emirate’s strategy in terms of its output capacity objectives. It also remains aligned to the collective Opec policy to maintain production to protect their market share.