ABU DHABI: Abu Dhabi plans to invest over $25 billion in the next five years on boosting its oil production capacity from offshore fields, a senior official of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. said.

The plan is part of the UAE’ strategy of increasing its crude oil output potential to 3.5 million barrels per day by 2017-18. The UAE’s actual current production is around 2.8 million bpd.

“We want to build capacity from production and from number of wells and infrastructure. Our current plan as ADNOC (is to reach) 3.5 million bpd and to sustain it,” Qasem Al-Kayoumi, manager of ADNOC’s offshore division of the exploration and production directorate, said.

Speaking at the Middle East Petroleum and Gas conference in Abu Dhabi, he also said the investment plan for offshore drilling activities was $2.5 billion per year.

ADNOC plans to drill around 160 wells per year in the next couple of years, Kayoumi said.

“It is a considerable increase — the number of rigs has built up considerably in offshore, it could be more than a 50 percent increase.”

He also said current production for the ADMA-OPCO and ZADCO oil fields was 1.2 million bpd and “in 2017-18 that figure will go close to, I would say around 1.6 million bpd.”

One of the main UAE fields being developed by Exxon is the giant Upper Zakum, for which the plan is to boost production capacity to 750,000 bpd by 2017-18; this may be raised further to 1 million bpd by 2024.

Al-Kayoumi said ADMA-OPCO was in an early phase of preparing for the renewal of its offshore concession, due to expire in 2018.

“We hope that this concession will be renewed with our (existing) partners and future partners.”

ADNOC Director General Abdullah Nasser Al-Suwaidi earlier said the company does not have a deadline for when to award further stakes in its 40-year onshore oilfield concession.

The comment suggests ADNOC, which signed an agreement on Jan. 29 with France’s Total giving the firm a 10 percent stake in the new concession, is in no rush to make a decision about other bidders in the tender.

Total’s bid set the bar high for peers like BP and Royal Dutch Shell after the French oil major submitted the best bid and highest signature bonus, according to industry sources.

When asked if talks with Shell and BP continued after they submitted revised bids, ADNOC’s director general told reporters in Abu Dhabi that the oil companies “know what we’ve asked for and they bid.”

“Whoever meets our conditions, will be considered... there is no timeline,” he added.

A total of nine firms bid for stakes in the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO) concession which became available after a 40-year deal with Western oil companies expired in January 2014.

ExxonMobil, Shell, Total and BP each held 9.5 percent equity stakes in that ADCO concession.

After the deal expired last year, ADNOC took 100 percent of the concession as political leaders in Abu Dhabi weighed up whether to bring in Asian firms, industry and diplomatic sources said.

Shell, Total and BP made new bids, while Exxon decided against bidding.

Other bidders include USfirm Occidental Petroleum Corp, Italy’s ENI, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), Norway’s Statoil, Korea National Oil Corp. and Japan’s Inpex.