ADNOC, OpenAI and G42 to Deploy AI Across Energy Operations

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI and G42 to integrate advanced artificial intelligence capabilities across its entire business value chain. This collaboration marks ADNOC as the first energy company globally to implement OpenAI’s "Advanced AI" platform, aiming to unify operational, capital, and commercial decision-making processes rather than handling them in isolated stages.

Strategic Vision for Energy Sector Transformation

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and Managing Director and CEO of ADNOC Group, emphasized that the initiative aligns with national leadership directives to invest in cutting-edge technology. He stated that the partnership leverages decades of sector expertise combined with world-class AI tools to enhance speed, create value, and ensure energy security.

Al Jaber noted that this move demonstrates how sophisticated AI models can transcend individual applications to reshape industry-wide workflows. By establishing Abu Dhabi as a hub for advanced technology, the project aims to define the future landscape of the energy sector through large-scale industrial AI implementation.

Executive Perspectives on Collaboration

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, highlighted the potential of advanced AI to address critical global challenges, particularly in energy. He explained that combining sovereign infrastructure, specialized sector knowledge, and advanced AI will enable ADNOC to accelerate operations, boost efficiency, and improve decision-making across the value chain.

Mansour Ibrahim Al Mansoori, CEO of G42 International, underscored that true AI value lies in developing systems that support humanity, with energy serving as a foundational pillar for global economic activity. He pointed out that the UAE focuses on building national AI capabilities while maintaining its role as a responsible energy provider. The partnership builds on years of collaboration between G42 and ADNOC through "AIQ," utilizing OpenAI’s advanced capabilities to deliver tangible results both domestically and internationally.

Initial Applications: Field Development and Value Optimization

The first phase of the partnership centers on two primary applications designed to transform field development planning. The initial solution converts fragmented studies regarding subsurface operations, facilities, and economics into a unified, integrated process. Leveraging data from ADNOC’s "ENERGYai" solution, OpenAI’s advanced reasoning models will synthesize decades of information from thousands of wells, multi-layer reservoirs, and hundreds of surface facilities.

This integration incorporates capital, cost, and commercial factors to generate comprehensive field development plans with unprecedented speed, scope, and depth. Unlike previous methods that optimized individual reservoirs or facilities separately, this approach improves the plan for the entire field simultaneously.

The second application positions ADNOC as the first energy company worldwide to determine the value of each barrel of oil while it remains underground. This tool connects information across the integrated value chain—from production and processing to refining, logistics, sales, and trading—replacing current decisions based on disparate systems and priorities.

A continuous network of AI agents will forecast crude supply, demand, prices, and profit margins, anticipating impacts before they occur. By evaluating the commercial and operational effects of every decision in real-time, from reservoirs to customers, the system provides actionable insights to maximize value from every barrel produced, processed, and sold by ADNOC.

Infrastructure, Security, and Workforce Enablement

Partners will co-develop solutions using OpenAI’s latest models alongside ADNOC’s deep sector data and expertise. These systems will run on G42’s sovereign AI infrastructure within the UAE, ensuring that human experts retain oversight of critical decisions. Beyond the initial applications, the collaboration will establish a shared industrial knowledge base to preserve institutional expertise and accelerate future AI development across ADNOC operations.

The agreement also strengthens ADNOC’s cybersecurity capabilities through OpenAI’s "Daybreak Blue" initiative. This program assists specialized teams in identifying vulnerabilities and protecting vital energy infrastructure. All solutions operate under ADNOC’s supervision to guarantee the security of proprietary data and critical assets.

Additionally, ADNOC and OpenAI will collaborate to upskill the workforce for effective AI adoption. This effort builds upon ADNOC’s existing deployment of "ChatGPT Enterprise," which serves over 40,000 employees. Representing the largest corporate rollout of ChatGPT in the Middle East and North Africa, the platform has achieved a usage rate exceeding 97 percent.

This partnership represents the latest step in ADNOC’s broader AI and robotics strategy, which currently encompasses more than 200 AI applications and 70 robotics use cases either implemented or under development.