Dubai airport, one of the world’s busiest, witnessed major disruption for a third straight day Thursday after the heaviest rains on record drenched the desert United Arab Emirates.

Emirates, Dubai’s state-owned flagship airline, and sister carrier flydubai resumed check-ins after telling passengers to stay away on Wednesday when thousands of delayed passengers clogged the airport.

The airport, which handles more international passengers than any other, hopes to resume “something approaching normality” within 24 hours, Dubai Airport CEO Paul Griffiths told AFP.

Some 1,244 flights were cancelled and 41 were diverted on Tuesday and Wednesday after torrential rains flooded the Middle East financial centre including its homes, malls and offices, and highways.

Traffic congestion remained severe on Thursday, two days after the storms, with at least one major road completely blocked by water and multiple junctions cut off by flooding.

Climate experts say the rains, the UAE’s heaviest since records began 75 years ago, are consistent with changes caused by global warming.

“There’s no news here,” Karim Elgendy, Associate Director at the Buro Happold engineering consultancy and associate fellow at Britain’s Chatham House think tank, told AFP. 

“We are expecting an increase in variability of rainfall, which means more extreme events, more drought and an increase in intensity of rainfall when it does rain.

‘Deeply distressed’ 

Dubai airport has witnessed chaotic scenes with crowds of marooned travellers clamouring for information about their flights.

Even as Emirates and flydubai resumed check-ins, more than 200 departures were listed as delayed or cancelled on the airport’s website.

Griffiths said it was “challenging” to get the airport fully functional, with supplies and staff also held up on flooded roads.

“Getting supplies through, people and all of the necessary things to the airport to help the schedule recover, was a massive challenge because all of the roads were blocked,” he said in an interview.

“We just hope that the level of customer care that we’ve been able to provide will go some way to mitigate the impacts that we had to customers. But obviously we’re deeply distressed by all of the disruption and concern that we’ve created,” he added.

One elderly couple’s 14-hour flight from Brisbane took 24 hours on Tuesday after it was diverted, and they were then unable to reach their hotel because of the flooding.

“It’s just the start of our holiday and I feel like going home — and I don’t know how to do that either,” Julie, 72, told AFP through tears.

“When they landed the plane on this airfield that was deserted, there was no terminal, there were no other planes and I thought we had been hijacked by terrorists,” she added, without giving her surname.

Makeshift ferry

Although schools and public sector offices have been closed until next week, traffic returned to the roads with some motorists, finding their route blocked, driving the wrong way down highways.

Supermarkets had empty shelves as deliveries failed to arrive, and retail staff reported having to stay overnight or sleep at hotels because they could not get home.

“We’re working but the problem is we’re not receiving chicken,” said one employee at a chicken restaurant that had no chicken or fries on display.

“The delivery cannot come here because of the flood.”

In the Arjan district, a man used a canoe to paddle passengers across a flooded street.

With taxis hard to book and hail, private motorists were stopping at queues of people and offering rides for high prices.

British visitor Chris Moss, 30, was one of those looking for a cab as he tried to reach the airport and locate his lost luggage.

“When we arrived the baggage area was full of bags but my luggage was nowhere to be seen,” said Moss, whose plane, hastily booked after his original flight was cancelled, arrived five hours late.

“It was still on the plane because the baggage area was flooded and they couldn’t get the bags off.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

The grouping of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the US continues to be a priority for the Biden administration and is not on the back-burner due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the White House has said.

The I2U2 grouping remains critically important and President Joe Biden is “deeply committed to making sure that we continue” with the grouping, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at the White House here on Wednesday.

Asked if the grouping is now on the back-burner or no longer active because of the Israel-Hamas conflict, the official said, “No, not at all, still a priority”.

“The I2U2 remains critically important and the president is deeply committed to making sure that we continue with the I2U2, obviously with our partnership among our four countries and beyond through innovative, inclusive and science-based solutions to advance… let’s not forget, enhance food and energy security space operations and other ventures, advancing projects on water conservation, waste management and other areas,” Jean-Pierre said.

So, there is a strong future for the I2U2 and “we’re looking forward to continuing that partnership” and it has not taken on the back-burner, the White House official said. “It certainly continues to be a priority,” Jean-Pierre said.

The I2U2’s first summit was held on July 14, 2022, to establish the group.

This grouping identifies bankable projects and initiatives to tackle some of the biggest challenges confronting the world, with particular focus on joint investments and new initiatives in water, energy, transportation, space, health, food security, and technology.

It also aims to mobilise private sector capital and expertise to achieve a variety of goals, including modernising infrastructure, advancing low carbon development pathways, and improving public health.

I2U2 partnership projects and initiatives are not limited in geographic scope – the group will explore opportunities anywhere it can make a positive impact, the State Department said. 

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

A general view of ADNOC headquarters in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Emirati energy giant ADNOC said Thursday it had awarded contracts to build a major gas project, just a few weeks before the Gulf state hosts the COP28 climate conference.

The company said it would invest in the Hail and Ghasha offshore fields, pledging that it would be the “world’s first project that aims to operate with net zero emissions”.

The two contracts, signed on the final day of the Abu Dhabi Energy Show, had a total estimated value of $16.9 billion, it said in a statement.

Construction work on the site has been entrusted to a joint venture between the Abu Dhabi-based National Petroleum Construction Company and Saipem of Italy.

Another Italian company, Tecnimont, will be responsible for onshore infrastructure.

ADNOC said the project includes “innovative decarbonisation technologies” to capture and store 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

The Hail and Ghasha projects are part of the Ghasha concession in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, which aims to produce more than 1.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day by 2030.

“ADNOC will continue to responsibly unlock its gas resources to enable gas self-sufficiency for the UAE, grow our export capacity and support global energy security,” it said in the statement.

The concession is operated by ADNOC, Eni, OMV, Wintershall Dea and Lukoil.

In a report published in September, experts from the Climate Action Tracker group highlighted the UAE’s “dependency on gas for electricity”, expressing concern about the COP28 host’s commitment to carbon capture.

The UN climate conference, which opens in Dubai on November 30, is being chaired by ADNOC head Sultan al-Jaber.

His appointment to the post has drawn criticism from environmentalists, who denounce the role of the hydrocarbon sector in global warming.

At the opening of the Abu Dhabi conference on Monday, Jaber said the industry was “at the heart of the solution” to climate change, calling on industry representatives to “silence the sceptics”.

He reiterated that the gradual phase-out of fossil fuels was “inevitable and essential”, while emphasising the global economy’s dependence on oil, gas and coal.

ADNOC made a commitment in July to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 for its own operations.

But the target does not take into account the indirect emissions produced by the hydrocarbons exported and burned by its customers, which account for the vast majority of its carbon footprint.