The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) announced a multi-year strategic partnership with OpenAI and G42 to expand the use of advanced AI technologies in energy sector operations, enhance operational efficiency, and accelerate strategic and commercial decision-making.
The agreement was announced during the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC 2026), in the presence of Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. Under this collaboration, ADNOC becomes the first energy company globally to use OpenAI's advanced AI platform to connect AI agents and coordinate their tasks across the company's various operations.
Integrating AI into the energy value chain
The partnership aims to transition ADNOC's AI applications from isolated solutions to an integrated ecosystem connecting various business stages, leveraging the company's operational data and accumulated expertise alongside the capabilities of OpenAI's advanced AI models.
This ecosystem will rely on integrating information related to oil reservoirs, assets, facilities, and operations, enabling more comprehensive decision-making in operational, investment, and commercial aspects, rather than dealing with each stage independently.
The first phase of the collaboration includes two main applications. The first focuses on developing oil field planning mechanisms by unifying geological, engineering, and economic studies within an integrated analysis process.
This will help leverage the historical data ADNOC has collected over decades, including thousands of wells, reservoirs, and surface facilities, to prepare more comprehensive field development plans, improve resource utilization efficiency, and accelerate decision-making.
AI to determine the economic value of every oil barrel
The second application aims to optimize the economic value of oil before it is extracted from the ground by connecting data and decisions related to various stages of the value chain, from production and processing, through refining and logistics, to sales and trading.
An interconnected group of AI agents will analyze forecasts for oil supply, demand, prices, and profit margins, as well as evaluate the potential commercial and operational outcomes of different decisions before implementation.
These capabilities will provide decision-makers with a more comprehensive view, helping them identify the best options to achieve the highest possible value from every barrel ADNOC produces, processes, and markets.
Sovereign infrastructure and data protection
The three companies will jointly develop and implement AI solutions, relying on OpenAI's latest models and ADNOC's specialized data and expertise. These solutions will operate through G42's sovereign AI infrastructure within the UAE.
The companies emphasized the continuation of specialized human oversight for critical decisions, with the solutions subject to ADNOC's supervision to ensure the protection of its proprietary data and the energy sector's critical infrastructure.
The agreement also includes enhancing ADNOC's cybersecurity capabilities by leveraging OpenAI's Daybreak Blue initiative to help specialized teams detect potential vulnerabilities and address threats that may target critical systems.
Over 40,000 employees use ChatGPT Enterprise
The partnership also extends to developing the skills of ADNOC employees and enhancing their ability to utilize AI tools in their daily work.
This step builds on the company's previous experience in implementing the ChatGPT Enterprise platform, which is used by over 40,000 employees with an adoption rate exceeding 97 percent, marking one of the largest enterprise deployments of the platform in the Middle East and North Africa region.
The agreement falls under ADNOC's AI and robotics strategy, which includes more than 200 AI applications, alongside 70 robotics use cases that have been implemented or are currently under development.
