Energy leaders bullish on fossil fuel demand at ADIPEC
On the opening day of the ADIPEC conference in Abu Dhabi, energy and industry leaders were sanguine about future energy demand in spite of concerns over a supply glut.
(Abu Dhabi) — Sentiment was decidedly bullish on Monday as global energy and industry leaders presented at the opening ceremony of ADIPEC, the annual energy conference held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“Energy equals jobs, energy equals growth, energy equals competitiveness and energy equals intelligence,” said Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology of the UAE, in his keynote speech.
Electricity demand will keep surging through 2040 as power for data centres grows fourfold, he said. Aviation will also “take off with the global airline fleet doubling from 25’000 to 50’000 and as a result renewables will more than double by 2040,” he added.
Meanwhile Al Jaber also said that LNG demand will grow by 50%, jet fuel by more than 30% and oil “will stay above 100 million barrels per day beyond 2040, increasingly used not just for mobility but more and more for materials and petrochemicals.”
“This all adds up to way more than a single path energy transition; what we are talking about here is reinforcement not replacement, in fact what we are really talking about here is energy addition,” the minister concluded, in what some would view as a backwards step for decarbonisation efforts.
A global energy supply glut, especially in the oil and LNG markets, is projected to swell through 2026, driven by robust production growth combined with a slowdown in demand growth.
The International Energy Agency expects 2026 demand to rise by 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) but warned in its October monthly report that a supply surge will result in a surplus of as much as 4 million bpd.
In his opening speech, Suhail Al Mazrouei, Minister of Energy and Infrastructure of the UAE, reiterated Al Jaber’s point that several energy sources will be required. “The world without a doubt will need more resources, it will without a doubt need more oil, more gas, more renewable energy..and we need to make sure that the environment for investment is allowed to do that,” he said.
“If we are not investing on a large scale (…) we will have an issue down the road,” he stressed.
Doug Burgum, 55th Secretary of the Interior of the United States, echoed their bullish stance, saying “let’s take the phrase and make it true that knowledge is not just power but that power is knowledge,” in his speech at the conference opening ceremony.
“The free world cannot lose the AI arms race…for that we need power (…) Let’s get the capital flowing,” he said.
“Our policy [in the U.S.] is to sell energy to our friends and allies so they don’t have to buy from their adversaries. We need to bring energy to everyone, bring AI to everyone — which will improve their lives — and bring peace to everyone,” he added.
Russia’s war with Ukraine is being funded by energy sales, Burgum noted.
Patrick Pouyanne, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, also stressed the need for more power supply for AI growth. “Why do I invest in electricity? Because it does not follow in the cycle of oil and gas. Investing in electricity in my company is giving more resilience to my business model and is a way to tackle the volatility of the cycle in oil and gas.”
“So Trump is right — we need more energy, we need more of all of it,” he added.
TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne being interviewed by CNN anchor Becky Anderson at ADIPEC 2025 (Photo: Sophie Davies/Gas Outlook)
Saad Al Kaabi, Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs, said that the Gulf nation had “already announced a while back that we can’t reach net zero.”
“Europe needs to understand that it needs gas from Qatar, from the U.S., from many places around the world,” he said. “If they don’t change that, it will be Toyota delivering cars that will be the problem — this is not just an oil and gas thing,” he said.
Karim Badawi, Egypt’s Minister of Petroleum & Mineral Resources, said the country is “very much focused on how we can play a key role in the energy landscape and how we can help to have molecules in the region monetised.”
“Egypt itself has a market of 120 million people and at the same time it has energy needs that are growing year on year (…) We are very much focused on how we can unlock the upstream sector and future reserves not just in Egypt but also in the Eastern Mediterranean.”
Meanwhile Dai Houliang, Chairman of China’s CNPC and of PetroChina, also talked about the need to develop fossil fuels alongside renewables: “We need to promote the integrated development of fossil fuels with renewables — I think this is a very viable choice,” he said.
Like renewables, fossil fuels will “play a very important role” in the future, he added.
(Writing by Sophie Davies)