David Heard

David Heard CBE (14 April 1939 – 18 October 2024) was an English oil executive, the representative of the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company (ADPC) to the government of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, an advisor to the Abu Dhabi Supreme Petroleum Council (SPC) and an author of books charting the history of the oil industry in the Emirates.

Early years Heard was born in Highgate, north London and attended Monkton Combe School in Bath before obtaining his degree in Geology and Physics from Keele University. Seeking adventure, he responded to an advertisement in The Times to work for an oil company. Heard turned down an offer to work in Kirkuk in 1963, opting instead for a role with the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company that involved travelling to Abu Dhabi, described to him as “a rough place for tough people”.

Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company In 1971 the government of Abu Dhabi partially nationalised the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company and Heard took on the role of liaising between the international investors - western oil companies who retained 40 per cent of ADPC's shares - and the UAE government.

Heard had been asked in 1995 by his friend, the UAE's first minister of foreign affairs Ahmed bin Khalifa Al Suwaidi, to record the history of the oil industry in the country based on the ADPC London archives and, in 2011, he stepped down from his role at the Petroleum Council to undertake research for his account, writing From Pearls to Oil, the first of his five books on the history of the industry. Undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer in 2024 in Munich, he gave a talk at the launch of his fifth volume on the history of the petrochemical industry in the Emirates - the History of the Oil Industry in the Gulf and the People Who Made it Happen, 1934-1966 - two weeks before he died.