ENOC Group, the integrated energy group wholly owned by the Government of Dubai, signed a memorandum of understanding with Abu Dhabi-based Allied Biofuels Holding on May 23 to cooperate on sustainable aviation fuel supply. Volumes would come from Allied Biofuels’ planned facility in Khorezm, Uzbekistan, a greenfield project for which a Project Implementation Agreement was signed with the regional government in April 2026 and which has yet to take a final investment decision.
The deal positions ENOC, which fuels the majority of flights at Dubai International, ahead of the UAE’s stated voluntary 1% SAF supply target for 2031 and a potential aviation fuel mandate currently under consultation by the General Civil Aviation Authority. The Middle East is a major aviation hub but a small SAF producer, and the UAE’s domestic SAF supply chain depends on imports. There is no in-force UAE SAF compliance regime today; the MoU is a positioning move ahead of one.
ENOC Group CEO Hussain Sultan Lootah framed the agreement as scaling the SAF value chain across production, certification, distribution, and offtake in step with the UAE’s Roadmap 2030 and Net Zero 2050 commitments, according to the joint statement distributed via Zawya. Allied Biofuels Holding managing director Alfred Benedict said the company is building a reliable, scalable, and commercially viable supply platform as aviation accelerates its transition to sustainable fuels. The Khorezm project as publicly described by Allied Biofuels is sized at roughly 160,400 tonnes per year of bio-SAF, 257,000 tonnes per year of synthetic e-SAF, and 5,040 tonnes per year of renewable diesel. The bio-SAF stream uses sorghum-derived first-generation bioethanol converted via the ethanol-to-jet (ATJ) pathway, an arrangement underpinned by a separate MoU between Allied Biofuels and Praj Industries for the ethanol plant. Total capex is estimated at around US$6.08 billion over a five-year build-out, with final investment decision targeted in Q4 2026. The MoU between ENOC and Allied Biofuels is structured as a preliminary framework; pricing, volumes, and delivery timetable into UAE airports are not disclosed.
For ENOC, the deal puts a marker down ahead of the UAE’s SAF Roadmap milestones and any future mandate. For Allied Biofuels Holding, the agreement pairs the Abu Dhabi-domiciled developer with a Dubai government-owned offtake counterparty for its own foreign greenfield asset, an intra-UAE corporate alignment around feedstock sourced abroad rather than a third-party Central Asian supply route. The commercial test arrives at FID, and again when one side converts the MoU into a binding offtake agreement. Watch the sorghum ethanol-to-jet eligibility question under ICAO CORSIA’s Eligible Fuels framework, which depends on land-use and indirect emissions assessments; under any future UAE scheme, comparable criteria will need to be defined.
