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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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United Arab Emirates
Index
In 1969 the amir of Sharjah granted a forty-year
concession
for offshore exploration and production to a consortium of
small
United States oil companies known as Crescent Oil Company.
Oil
was discovered in 1973 in the Mubarak field off the island
of Abu
Musa, and production began in 1974. Because of conflicting
territorial claims, Sharjah has production and drilling
rights
but shares production and revenue with Iran (50 percent),
Umm al
Qaywayn (20 percent), and Ajman (10 percent). By about
1984, Iran
reportedly ceased transferring to Sharjah its half-share
of oil
revenues, presumably because of the financial drain of the
war
with Iraq, as well as Arab support of Iraq. In 1988 Iran
attacked
the facilities at Mubarak, causing their closure for two
months.
In 1980 the American Oil Company (Amoco--later Amoco
Sharjah)
announced a major discovery onshore of oil and gas in the
Saghyah
field. By late 1983, output reached 35,000 bpd of
condensate,
which was exported. In 1984 total production reached
62,000 bpd.
In the same year, the Emirates General Petroleum
Corporation
completed a 224-kilometer pipeline to supply dry gas to
power
plants in the northern amirates. The pipeline had a
capacity of
60,000 bpd of condensate and 1.1 million cubic meters per
day of
gas. After Dubayy and Sharjah settled their border dispute
in
1985, a pipeline was built to supply gas from the Saghyah
field
to the power and desalination plant of the Dubai
Electrical
Company at Mina Jabal Ali. An LPG processing plant that
came online in 1986 was producing 11.3 million cubic meters of
wet gas
per day in 1987. The amirate's outlook was optimistic in
1992,
with Amoco Sharjah announcing a new onshore gas and
condensate
field and increased reserves at existing fields.
Data as of January 1993
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