The UAE will continue to produce oil for the next 150 years given its enormous crude reserves that rank fourth in the world, and output could last longer with the improvement of recovery technology, an UAE official was quoted as saying.

The country's recoverable oil wealth is estimated at 98 billion barrels, the fourth largest after those in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, said Dr. Ibrahim Ismail, an adviser at the Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources.

"At current production rates, UAE's extractable oil reserves could last up to 150 years, one of the highest rates in the world," he said at a recent oil conference, quoted by the Fujairah Chamber's monthly magazine, Al Ghorfa.

Experts said production could last longer with the development of new technology that could reach deeper layers, where large quantities of hydrocarbons are believed embedded. UAE officials have said inaccessible reserves could be as much as those in place.

UAE started producing oil in early 1960s at a rate of a few hundreds of thousands of barrels, which have steadily grown with the development of new fields.

Output hit a record 2.24 million barrels per day in 1998 but receded to around 1.9 million bpd at present following a collective agreement between Opec and other producers to reduce supplies.

Experts expect oil supplies by the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil giants to sharply increase in the medium term as global demand is growing steadily and other supply sources are shrinking.

The UAE currently has a sustainable oil production capacity of around 2.6 million bpd, which is set to surpass three million bpd within a few years.

Industry sources said more tan $15 billion have been pumped by the UAE and its foreign partners into oil development projects and billions more would be invested in the coming years in projects involving exploration, and field maintenance and development.

"Regarding its reserves of natural gas, the UAE has around 6.1 trillion cubic metres, the fifth largest after those in Russia, Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia," Ismail said.

He said energy development projects in the UAE have also covered refining, which has been upgraded from around 200,000 bpd in 1995 to nearly 700,000 bpd currently.

"This upward trend is expected to continue to meet growing local consumption and the country's export needs...such an increase was due to expansion in the capacity of the existing plants and the construction of new refining projects."

Expansions in the refining and gas sector combined with a surge in crude prices in 2000 to lift UAE's net earnings from hydrocarbon sales to a record Dh56 billion. They dipped to around Dh48.5 billion in 2001.