UAE: Abu Dhabi

With many of the emirate’s onshore oilfields reaching maturity, plans to expand future production to 3.5m barrels per day (bpd) will mean a much bigger role for the emirate’s offshore sector. Indeed, the next five years will see more than $25bn invested in offshore production, as the government hopes to reach the 3.5m bpd goal by 2017,...

Despite being home to the world’s seventh-largest natural gas reserves, with 215trn standard cu feet (scf), according to the “BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015”, the UAE has been a net importer of gas since 2008. Indeed, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), over the past decade the UAE’s imports of natural gas...

For the past two years Abu Dhabi’s onshore oil industry has been slowly transitioning to a new era. As of January 2014, the concession agreements that had defined the sector from its earliest beginnings more than 75 years ago are no more.

The tax system is one of the key pillars to have supported the UAE’s economic growth over recent decades. The federal government applies no corporate, personal, capital gains, value-added or withholding taxes, while emirate-level tax legislation introduced in the 1960s has never been implemented.

As the Middle East’s second-biggest oil producer, the UAE has seen much attention directed to it over the past year regarding the effect of subdued oil prices on the economy. The emirate of Abu Dhabi is a key player in the response to this challenge. As home to the nation’s capital it hosts many institutions that oversee the UAE’s social and...

Given the stubbornly low oil prices of 2015, with no sign of a significant recovery in the short term, the run-up to the publication of the UAE’s current federal budget saw much speculation as to how the government might pare back state spending. For some, the reduction of subsidies earlier in 2015 set a new tone with regard to budgetary...