Lower Zakum Reserves: 17.2B Barrels, Official Source

Reviewed September 2026 against the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s UAE Country Analysis Brief and Wikipedia’s sourced field pages for Lower Zakum and Upper Zakum.

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Lower Zakum’s proven crude oil reserves are 17.2 billion barrels, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s UAE Country Analysis Brief. The widely repeated “50 billion barrels” figure for Upper and Lower Zakum combined does not come from the EIA and is not independently verified in official government data — this article traces where the number actually originates and gives you the sourced, field-by-field breakdown instead.

If you searched for “zakum field 66 billion barrels source” or “”upper zakum” “50 billion barrels” official,” here is the short answer: no EIA document or ADNOC disclosure we could locate states either combined figure. What IS documented, and cited below with a link you can check yourself, is Lower Zakum’s 17.2 billion barrels (EIA) and the field’s role inside the UAE’s 113 billion barrels of total proven reserves (EIA, 2024).

Lower Zakum & Upper Zakum Reserves: What’s Actually Sourced

Start with the one number that has a clean, checkable government citation: Lower Zakum’s proven crude oil reserves are 17.2 billion barrels, per the EIA’s UAE Country Analysis Brief. The same brief puts the UAE’s total proven crude oil reserves at 113 billion barrels as of 2024 — meaning Lower Zakum alone accounts for roughly 15% of the entire country’s proven crude reserve base. That is the scale reference an AI summary tends to skip: it is not “a big field,” it is a field that on its own outsizes the total proven reserves of most oil-producing nations.

Wikipedia’s Lower Zakum field page, which draws on ADNOC Offshore’s own disclosures, converts that 17.2 billion barrels into 2.42 billion tonnes — the unit ADNOC and many international agencies use internally for reserve accounting. If you’ve seen the field’s reserves quoted in tonnes elsewhere, that conversion is where it comes from, and it is internally consistent with the EIA’s barrel figure.

For Upper Zakum, the EIA brief and the field’s EIA Today in Energy analysis do not publish a standalone proven-reserves figure in the way they do for Lower Zakum — Upper Zakum’s reserve number is typically folded into ADNOC’s aggregate Abu Dhabi disclosures rather than broken out field-by-field in public U.S. government data. That gap is real, and Section “What Isn’t Publicly Documented” below tells you exactly where to look for an update rather than guessing at a figure.

Tracing the “50 Billion Barrels” and “66 Billion Barrels” Claims

Several high-volume search queries assume a specific combined reserve figure exists in an “official” document: 50 billion barrels for Upper Zakum alone, or 66 billion barrels for the Zakum complex as a whole. Neither number appears in the EIA’s UAE Country Analysis Brief, in the EIA’s Upper Zakum production analysis, or in the Wikipedia field pages sourced from ADNOC Offshore and EIA data used for this article’s research.

• Lower Zakum, sourced: 17.2 billion barrels proven reserves (EIA UAE Country Analysis Brief).
• Upper Zakum, sourced reserve figure: not separately published in the EIA materials reviewed for this piece — see the gaps section for how to request or locate a field-specific disclosure.
• UAE total, sourced: 113 billion barrels proven crude reserves, 2024 (EIA UAE Country Analysis Brief).
• 50 billion / 66 billion combined figures: not found in EIA, ADNOC investor materials, or the Wikipedia pages cited in this article’s research. These numbers may originate from older press estimates, third-party aggregator sites, or a conflation of Upper Zakum’s production capacity target (discussed next) with a reserves figure — but we did not find a primary source that states them as reserves, so we are not repeating them as fact.

This distinction matters because reserves and production capacity are different measurements entirely, and headline writers frequently blur them. Upper Zakum’s 1.5 million barrels per day figure you may have seen is a production capacity target (covered in detail below) — not a reserves number, and not interchangeable with one.

Production: Barrels Per Day, Field by Field

Production data is where the EIA is most specific and most current. As of the EIA’s most recent analysis (2024–2026 reporting window):

• Upper Zakum production: 590,000 barrels per day, per the EIA’s Today in Energy analysis.
• Lower Zakum production: 425,000 barrels per day, per Wikipedia’s Lower Zakum field page (sourced to ADNOC Offshore).
• Combined current Upper + Lower Zakum output: approximately 1.015 million barrels per day at these reported rates — which is likely the origin of the “over 1 million barrels per day” figure circulating for the complex, as distinct from any reserves claim.

These production figures are reported by the EIA on a rolling basis as part of its international country analysis coverage, meaning the specific bpd numbers above are a snapshot as of the EIA’s most recent publication rather than a fixed constant — ADNOC’s own quarterly output can run above or below the EIA’s cited rate depending on OPEC+ quota adjustments and maintenance cycles. Check the EIA link directly for the current figure before citing it elsewhere.

Who Owns Upper Zakum: The ZADCO Structure

Upper Zakum is operated through the Zakum Development Company (ZADCO), and the ownership split is one of the more stable, well-documented facts about the field. Per the Wikipedia Upper Zakum field page, sourced to EIA and ADNOC disclosures:

This structure explains why ExxonMobil investor communications and OilPrice.com coverage — rather than only ADNOC’s own channels — are useful independent sources for Upper Zakum capacity news: ExxonMobil has its own disclosure obligations tied to its 28% stake, giving you a second, cross-checkable source for expansion announcements.

Zakum Field Overview: Location and Structure

• 🌍 Location: The Zakum complex sits offshore Abu Dhabi in the shallow Persian Gulf continental shelf, developed by ADNOC and its joint-venture partners.
• 🗺️ Two fields, one complex: “Zakum” splits into Upper Zakum (operated via ZADCO) and Lower Zakum (operated via ADNOC Offshore), each with separate reserve and production reporting.
• 🏗️ Infrastructure: Offshore platforms, subsea pipelines, and onshore processing and export terminals connect both fields to Abu Dhabi’s export network.

If your search was simply “zakum” or “zakum field” without a specific reserves or production angle, this split is the first thing to understand: Upper and Lower Zakum are reported as two distinct assets in EIA and ADNOC data, not one combined field with one number — which is exactly why single combined figures circulating online are hard to verify against primary sources.

Lower Zakum vs Upper Zakum: Comparison Table

The table below puts every sourced figure from this article side by side, so you can see field-by-field data instead of a single blended claim.

Upper Zakum’s 1.5 Million bpd Expansion Target

The most concrete forward-looking figure in the public record is Upper Zakum’s production capacity expansion target: 1.5 million barrels per day, reported by OilPrice.com, citing ExxonMobil. This is guidance from ExxonMobil, as the 28% ZADCO partner, on where Upper Zakum’s capacity is headed — not a reserves claim, and not a figure ADNOC itself has published independently in the sources reviewed here.

Against the field’s current 590,000 bpd, hitting 1.5 million bpd would represent more than a 2.5x increase in Upper Zakum’s output alone. OilPrice.com’s reporting characterizes this as a target that could be reached earlier than originally planned, based on ExxonMobil’s public statements — which means the completion date is a moving figure best tracked directly through ExxonMobil’s investor relations announcements rather than repeated as fixed here.

Upper Zakum Weather and Operating Conditions

Searches for “upper zakum weather forecast” are typically from people tracking offshore operations, shipping, or marine logistics near the field rather than looking for climate data about the field itself. Upper Zakum sits in the shallow Persian Gulf roughly off the Abu Dhabi coast, an area subject to the Gulf’s seasonal shamal wind events (strong northwesterly winds, most frequent in winter and early summer) that can affect offshore platform operations and marine transit.

Neither the EIA nor the Wikipedia field pages used in this article’s research publish field-specific meteorological data, and Farmonaut’s own sourcing for this piece does not include a live weather feed for the platform’s exact coordinates. For an actual operating forecast, the standard approach is to check a marine weather service covering the Abu Dhabi offshore block (for example, a Gulf-specific marine forecast or the UAE National Center of Meteorology) rather than a general national weather forecast, since offshore conditions in the shallow Gulf shelf can diverge meaningfully from onshore Abu Dhabi readings.

How to Verify These Numbers Yourself

Every figure in this article traces to one of three sources, and all three are checkable in under five minutes:

1. EIA UAE Country Analysis Brief (eia.gov PDF) — search the document for “Zakum” to find the Lower Zakum reserves figure and the UAE total reserves figure directly. The EIA updates this brief on a rolling basis; the version referenced here is dated July 2026.
2. EIA Today in Energy, Upper Zakum analysis (eia.gov/todayinenergy) — carries the Upper Zakum production figure and UAE production-target context.
3. Wikipedia’s Lower Zakum and Upper Zakum field pages — both cite ADNOC Offshore and EIA as primary sources; check the reference footnotes on each page rather than the body text alone, since that’s where the original ADNOC and EIA links live.

For production data specifically, ADNOC posts its own press releases at adnoc.ae/news on a quarterly cadence — that is the fastest way to get a number newer than what’s cited in this article, since EIA’s international reporting typically lags ADNOC’s own announcements by one to two quarters.

Calculator: Reserves-to-Production Runway

Use the sourced Lower Zakum figures above, or swap in Upper Zakum’s numbers once you have a reserves estimate, to see how many years of runway a given reserves-to-production ratio implies.

What Isn't Publicly Documented

In the interest of not repeating unsourced numbers, here is what this research could not confirm in official English-language sources as of September 2026:

• Upper Zakum's standalone proven reserves figure — not found broken out separately from ADNOC's aggregate Abu Dhabi disclosures in the EIA materials reviewed. ExxonMobil's investor relations filings (as the 28% ZADCO partner) are the most likely place to find a field-specific number if one exists.
• Discovery date or geological formation age for either field — not confirmed in the sources used for this article.
• Oil quality specifics (API gravity, sulfur content) — the EIA describes UAE offshore crude generally as relatively sour, but no field-specific numerical sulfur or API gravity figure for Zakum was located in the sources reviewed.
• Historical reserve revisions — no year-over-year trend data on how Lower or Upper Zakum's reserve estimates have changed over time was found; the EIA brief reflects a point-in-time figure, not a revision history.
• Per-barrel production cost economics — not disclosed publicly by ADNOC, ExxonMobil, or INPEX for this field in the materials reviewed.

If you need any of these for research or investment purposes, the EIA brief, ADNOC's press office, and ExxonMobil's investor relations desk are the three channels most likely to hold or eventually publish them — going back to the same three sources this article cites is more reliable than searching for a number that may not exist in public form yet.

Satellite Intelligence for Resource Exploration (Farmonaut)

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FAQ: Zakum Reserves and Production

Conclusion

The sourced, checkable numbers on Zakum are narrower than the figures circulating online: Lower Zakum's proven reserves are 17.2 billion barrels per the EIA, Upper Zakum currently produces 590,000 bpd against a stated expansion target of 1.5 million bpd, and Lower Zakum produces 425,000 bpd — against a UAE national total of 113 billion barrels of proven reserves. The widely repeated "50 billion" and "66 billion" combined figures do not trace to any EIA, ADNOC, or ExxonMobil source located during this research, and this article treats that gap honestly rather than repeating an unsourced number.

For the parts of this picture that remain undocumented — Upper Zakum's standalone reserves, discovery dates, oil quality specifics — the EIA's UAE Country Analysis Brief, ADNOC's press office, and ExxonMobil's investor relations channel are the three places a fresher, field-specific number is most likely to surface first. Check them directly using the links above rather than a secondhand summary, since that is the only way to catch a revision before it circulates as another unsourced headline figure.

For resource exploration beyond producing fields like Zakum, Farmonaut's satellite-based mineral detection and 3D prospectivity mapping apply similar remote-sensing discipline to early-stage mineral targets, before a single reserves figure exists to argue about.