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 Das island, the main centre of the UAE's offshore oil industry, lies in the middle of the Arabian Gulf, around 140 kilometres, northwest of Abu Dhabi. There is no public access.
Das was formerly an important breeding site for turtles and thousands of seabirds, most of which abandoned the island in the early 1960s when it was developed as an oil and gas export terminal. In recent years, however, over a hundred pairs of white-cheeked terns (Sterna repressa) have resumed breeding on the island, an example of how birds can adapt to a modern industrial environment.
Well out in the Gulf, Das is an important staging post for migrant birds, with several species seen here having been recorded nowhere else in the Emirates to date.
Turtles are still seen close to the island, but now try only rarely to nest on its beaches.
Little trace of ancient occupation on Das has survived the industrial development of recent decades although pieces of Late Islamic pottery still turn up from time to time. There is also a fishermen's cemetery.
The name Das is first mentioned (as ‘Daas’) in 1580, in a book by a Venetian jeweller, Gasparo Balbi while the island was first mapped by hydrographic surveyors from the British East India Company's Bombay Marine in the 1820s.
Today, Das is the export terminal for oil from the offshore fields of the Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO) and for liquefied natural gas produced by the Abu Dhabi Gas Liquefaction Company (ADGAS), both part of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Group.
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