UAE's first ever oil and gas museum attracts visitors

Visitors to this year's Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC) have been treated to the UAE's first ever oil and gas museum.

The ADIPEC Museum is a unique collection of photographs, equipment, maps and documents that illustrates the history of the local oil industry from its humble beginnings with the signing of the Red Line Agreement in 1928 to the present day.

Hosted in an outdoor marquee at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, the 500-square-metre museum also has a chronological display of photographs of the Abu Dhabi region dating back to the 1930s. The photographs illustrate the growth of Abu Dhabi in the last 70 years from a modest fishing community struggling in the wake of a dwindling pearl diving industry into the 8th largest oil exporter in the world.

The ADIPEC Museum was assembled over the past year and offers visitors a unique opportunity to look at materials that have never been seen before in a single public display. The curators poured over 17,000 photographs from 15 local and international archives.

The museum is a notable collaborative effort between international oil companies. Four of the seven original signatories of Abu Dhabi's first oil concession agreement of 1939, namely: ExxonMobil, Total, Shell and BP, are significant contributors to the museum.