Aerial view of jackup barge Achiever operated by Dhubai-based ZMI Holding, a subsidiary of ADNOC Logistics and Services.
ZMI Holdings
Every year, the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston serves as a barometer for where global energy infrastructure is heading. This year’s theme, Steering Offshore Energy Innovation into the Future, captured a growing industry reality: while the global energy mix is diversifying, the offshore infrastructure capabilities required to build and maintain it remain closely linked.
That reality has become even more pronounced amid heightened geopolitical instability, supply chain disruption, and rising energy security concerns stemming from conflicts in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. In an environment shaped by sanctions, shipping disruptions, regional tensions, and increasing competition for strategic resources, offshore infrastructure is no longer viewed solely through a commercial lens. It is increasingly central to national resilience, economic stability, and long-term energy security.
For governments seeking to balance decarbonization with reliability, the challenge is becoming less about choosing between conventional and renewable energy systems and more about ensuring the infrastructure exists to support both securely and at scale.
Ali El Ali, CEO of Abu Dhabi-based ZMI Holdings, told me in a recent interview that the future of offshore energy is less about replacing one system with another than it is about extending proven operational expertise across multiple energy sectors, leveraging decades of marine engineering experience to support a more diversified global energy system.
Ali El Ali, CEO of Abu Dhabi-based ZMI Holdings
ZMI Holdings
As governments expand investment in renewables while continuing to rely on hydrocarbons for energy security, companies with large-scale offshore engineering capabilities are taking on a more central strategic role. ZMI, wholly owned by ADNOC Logistics & Services, increasingly reflects that shift.
Today, the company is supporting offshore oil and gas infrastructure across the Middle East, Asia, and Africa while also deploying marine assets into major U.S. offshore wind developments. This operational footprint illustrates how offshore infrastructure is becoming less tied to any single energy source and more closely linked to broader strategic energy priorities.
Offshore Wind as Strategic Expansion
ZMI’s recent entry into the United States offers a clear example of that broader shift. Through operating HEA-class jack-up assets, the company is supporting Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects off the U.S. Northeast coast, two of the country’s most significant offshore wind developments.
Breaking into the U.S. market meant navigating strict regulatory requirements, from Jones Act compliance and U.S. Coast Guard approvals to a complex mobilization process involving multiple authorities.
For many operators, those hurdles remain difficult to overcome. For ZMI, establishing itself in the U.S. was about more than entering a new market: It demonstrated the company’s ability to operate across different regulatory environments and apply its offshore expertise to both traditional and renewable energy projects.
As governments place greater emphasis on securing domestic supply chains while balancing decarbonization goals with energy security concerns, that kind of operational flexibility is likely to become increasingly important.
In many respects, offshore wind itself is becoming part of a larger strategic equation, one where energy transition is increasingly shaped not only by climate ambitions, but also by national security considerations and supply chain resilience.
ADNOC’s Broader Maritime Strategy
ZMI’s growth also reflects ADNOC Logistics & Services’ wider ambition to build a globally integrated maritime, logistics, and offshore infrastructure platform. “Our key aim is to be the world’s leading maritime energy service provider on a global scale,” Ali says, adding that the U.S. Is a key market for ZMI. “It’s the US, it’s Latin America, it is Asia, it’s Africa, it’s Europe, while ensuring that our key markets, which is the UAE and the surrounding neighbors, are always going to be our number one priority of focused growth.”
Since acquiring ZMI in 2022, ADNOC L&S has significantly expanded its global reach, growing revenue from approximately $2 billion in 2021 to roughly $5 billion by FY2025 while broadening both fleet scale and service capabilities.
The company now operates more than 340 owned vessels, with an additional 600 chartered or operated annually across five continents. Its portfolio spans crude shipping, LNG, gas carriers, global commercial pools through Navig8, and offshore marine services.
In today’s increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment, where trade routes are shifting and energy security has become a growing priority, that integrated scale offers strategic and commercial advantages.
The Infrastructure Behind Energy Diversification
Much of the public debate around energy transition still centers on fuel sources, whether oil, gas, wind, hydrogen, or solar. Offshore, the reality is more practical. Building and maintaining large-scale energy infrastructure at sea depends on marine engineering, regulatory know-how, specialized fleets, and decades of operational experience.
As supply disruptions and national security concerns play a larger role in shaping energy policy, those capabilities are becoming more important.
While energy transition is often framed as a climate or technology issue, offshore it is also about infrastructure, execution, and the ability to deliver reliably at scale. In that environment, the companies likely to have the greatest long-term influence may be those defined less by what they produce and more by the infrastructure they can build, maintain, and deploy consistently.
For ZMI and other peer companies, Ali says that evolution is already well underway, as offshore operators increasingly apply legacy marine engineering capabilities across a broader energy mix that now spans both conventional hydrocarbons and large-scale renewable infrastructure.
Instead of treating this energy addition and diversification as a departure from legacy capabilities, the offshore sector is increasingly demonstrating that existing industrial expertise may prove essential to enabling both traditional energy security and future diversification.
Rather than a complete break from the past, offshore infrastructure and energy innovation is evolving into a broader industrial system where marine infrastructure and operational capability may prove just as important as the energy resources themselves.