Assalamu alaykum. Your Highness Mansour bin Zayed, Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Chairman of the Presidential Court. Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to Abu Dhabi and to ADIPEC. It's great to see so many energy leaders, peers, and friends here today. And let me just start by saying it is indeed you who have helped make ADIPEC the platform that turns essential dialogue into clear direction for our industry. This is where facts come into focus, ideas meet investment, ambitions meet action, and the future of energy is not just debated, in fact, it is defined.
Colleagues, as I thought about what I wanted to say with you today, there was a lot to consider. Geopolitics continue to shape trade flows and news flows. Complexity is constant. Sentiment moves markets. And volatility, in my view, is no longer a variable. It is the norm. With all the static around, it can be difficult to focus on what is really material to our business. And at times like these, my approach is simple: tune out the noise, track the signal.
And the signal, my dear colleagues, is telling us that near-term uncertainty is real while long-term demand remains very strong. It is telling us to balance cost discipline with capital investment, stay laser-focused on efficiency while investing in people, technology, and AI. In short, while we may face headwinds in the months ahead, the long-term outlook shows demand growth for every form of energy across every market. And ladies and gentlemen, our response to that demand should focus on the data, not the drama.
And here are the facts. Electricity demand will keep surging through 2040 as power for data centers grows fourfold, 1.5 billion people move into cities, and more than 2 billion air conditioners come online. 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. LNG will grow by 50%. Jet fuel will grow 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 something far more complex than a single-path energy transition. What we're talking about here is reinforcement, not replacement. In fact, what we're really talking about here is energy addition. And everyone and everywhere when they look, the signal could not be clearer: energy equals jobs, energy equals growth, energy equals competitiveness, and energy equals intelligence.
Colleagues, yesterday we hosted here in Abu Dhabi the third ENACT Majlis focused on how to ignite the twin engines of energy and AI to turbocharge economies. Leaders from energy, technology, policy, and finance built on the previous ENACT gatherings to deliver the following findings: One, we still rely on molecules to create the electrons that AI needs. And here, allow me to quote Secretary Burgum yesterday, who summed it up perfectly: 'We used to say that knowledge is power. Now, for the first time in history, power is knowledge.' Gas provides more than a quarter of the baseload power required by data centers, and a shortage of gas turbines is turning a supply crunch into a chokepoint that is pushing electricity prices higher. Two, infrastructure is still way behind where it needs to be. We need at least 6 million kilometers of new transmission lines by 2040. You simply can't run tomorrow's economy on yesterday's grid. Three, we need massive capital investment. We are talking about more than $4 trillion annually to cover grids, data centers, and all sources of energy supply. The fact is that capital is available. We need the right structures in place to de-risk and ensure that this capital flows to the right places, and we need to free up dormant capital that is tied up in existing energy infrastructure assets. And on this point, trust me, there is huge potential here. And four, and most importantly, policy. Policy must enable progress, not obstruct growth.
And on this particular point, let me be very clear: policies should be pragmatic, not performative. Policies should be based on insight, not ideology, built on first principles, not fleeting popularity. Because regulation without realism and legislation without logic will only weaken economies, stunt societies, and drive capital away.
Colleagues, here in the United Arab Emirates, we take a pragmatic approach that optimizes energy, attracts capital, and advances technology to fast-track progress. And at ADNOC, we are using every technology available, including AI and robotics, to collapse time and expand value. Through our homegrown company, AIQ, we have embedded over 200 AI use cases from the wellhead to the trading floor. These tools are cutting unplanned shutdowns by half and enhancing performance across our business. Our flagship program, Energy to the Power of AI, will make production forecasts 90% more accurate, and we are just getting started. We haven't yet scratched the surface. There is still much more to do. We are very much laser-focused on becoming the most AI-native energy company, driving a new era of intelligence-powered optimization and efficiency.
And here is the thing: when efficiency counts, this is the place where the lowest-cost and lowest-carbon barrels live. When capital seeks certainty, here is where you'll find the best bang for your buck. When good governance and rule of law are crucial, here is where partnerships are rock solid and ROI is secured. That is why global capital continues to flow here, because investors always value credibility, predictability, and trust, and all are found here in abundance in Abu Dhabi and across the United Arab Emirates.
And as ADNOC continues to progress and thrive here at home, we are also going global to find the right opportunities through our international investment arm, XRG. We have closed gas deals in Mozambique, Egypt, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and the United States, and we continue to look for more opportunities across the gas value chain. We are building a truly global chemical footprint across five continents, and we are investing in infrastructure and smart energy solutions to unlock new corridors for growth. We have taken a disciplined approach, partnered across public and private sectors, and we are ready to partner with more. So to all our current and future partners, our door is wide open. We are very open for business, but more than that, we are open for boldness.
Excellencies, partners, ladies and gentlemen, my friends, today we mark UAE Flag Day, a moment that captures the spirit of this nation. At exactly 11:00 a.m., people from everywhere across the country will stop what they are doing and come together in a single act of unity and connection. It is a simple but powerful tribute. We all look up and we honor our flag in a moment of pride. We recall the guidance and wisdom of our leadership and the debt we owe to all who came before us. We remember that great steps forward take sacrifice, and we remind ourselves that the power of acting in unison is exponential. The lessons from this moment for our industry are clear: real progress is never the work of one single individual or a single company. It happens when we move together with purpose, all pull in the same direction, and recognize that the most powerful resource we have is not found in the ground. It is the resilience that binds us and the resolve that drives us. So as you leave this room today, hold on to this thought: in a world full of distraction, take a beat, tune out the noise, stay the course, stand your ground, and focus on what truly matters. I thank you all, and I wish you a great and a successful ADIPEC. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Dr. Sultan. It is a great privilege and an honor to welcome the chair of America's Energy Dominance Council, US Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum. Mr. Secretary.
Good morning. It's such an honor to be here in Abu Dhabi with all of you. And as the MC and as Dr. Sultan has greeted all the Highnesses, Your Excellency, the royal family, the ministers from so many countries that are here, of course, all of you, I say welcome to all of you. But I also want to extend gratitude to anybody who's in the room, because if you're in this room, you're playing an important role in the future of this country. If you're involved in the energy business today, we stand at a critical moment of time. And that moment of time is a confluence of a number of things that are coming together, and some of those have to do with the advance of innovation. Energy has always been integral to national security, and energy has always been the underpinning of any nation's prosperity. The two of those things come together to now where we've got a point in time that we've not been at before.
If we think back in history, just 150 years ago in the United States of America, Thomas Edison was in his lab going through a thousand experiments, each time not being able to achieve the expected outcome of being able to capture the power of electricity and turn it into light. But that miracle happened, and that was a point in time when the world changed. A few years later, he hired a young Nikola Tesla. They worked together. This was 1879, in the 1880s, so about 150 years ago. And then about exactly 50 years ago, the personal computer comes on the scene. And the personal computer, again another inflection, a point in time which started to change everything. The personal computer and software became the thing that extended human capability and human knowledge more than ever before. But the two weren't really connected because the entire tech industry was able to move ahead using very little of the electricity of the world. I had an opportunity to work in technology for almost three decades before I got into policy and elected leadership. In the United States, the tech industry never used more than 1% of the nation's power. It was an afterthought. Capital expenses weren't even part of the tech industry.
But today, Dr. Sultan delivered what I think was the best opening keynote at any energy conference ever. Come on, give it up for Dr. Sultan. That was amazing. That was incredible. Wow. I want to just keep sitting there and just hear more of that. And the slides, I mean, I've never listened to a speaker go before me ever in my life where I agreed with every word they said, which was a first. But that was so timely. But as Dr. Sultan was quoting what I said yesterday morning, which is true, at this point in time in history now we've got a situation because in all cultures, in all history, for all time, there's been in almost every language a phrase that says that knowledge is power. But now we take the miracle of electricity and the invention and innovation of computing, and we marry them together, and a kilowatt of electricity is more valuable than ever before because it doesn't just turn on your lights; a kilowatt of electricity can be converted directly into intelligence. For the first time in humanity's history, we can manufacture intelligence.
And that intelligence is a general-purpose technology. It can be used by everyone. I've stopped calling these data centers, because a data center was a closed-loop system between a company and its customers. But these are actual factories where we're manufacturing intelligence that can be used to advance medicine, to enhance education, to transform how we deliver healthcare. And as was shown this morning, it can be used in this industry and in every industry to dramatically increase the power and the efficiency of what that industry is doing. So the demand for this product is going to be incredible, because of course it's also going to be integral to defense; it's going to be integral to national security. So the demand signal—forget the noise, the signal is that the demand for power is going to go up and up and up. And as both Dr. Sultan and I have been saying, today is the day to announce that there is no energy transition; there is only energy addition, and we need to have more power to move people forward. We have 800 million people on the planet that don't have electricity today.
And I will tell you one thing about capital. They talked about the trillions of dollars of capital. The capital is going to flow to where the lowest electricity prices are. You would never set up a manufacturing plant, say a mill to grind wheat into flour, you would not put that flour mill in a place where the cost of wheat was three times higher than it might be on the other side of a border. But why do we have price changes? Why do we have some places in the world that have high energy costs and others low? Some of it has to do with physics. Some of it has to do with the glorious gift of abundance of natural resources that some countries have been blessed with. But a big chunk of it today, as all of you know, is policy. There's a set of policies that have been driven by an ideology around climate extremism that said the highest-order bit, the most important thing that was above human flourishing, was the fear of the catastrophe of a degree of climate change in 2100, 75 years from now. 'Be afraid, be afraid, be afraid. Stop doing all this other stuff.' What we need to do is make sure that we have the energy to drive artificial intelligence, because artificial intelligence is not just a product that can be sold; it is the thing that is going to drive innovation and an innovation cycle like none of us have ever seen.
In the 30 years that I spent in tech, it was driven by Moore's Law. Moore's Law, everyone understands, you doubled the power and speed of a chip in 18 to 24 months, and the price got cut in half. So what happened after the first cycle? Then you'd be 2x, then it would be four, then four became eight, eight became 16, 32, 64, 128, 256k, and on and on, 512, 1024. It was an exponential curve of increase in power and a drop of price. And many humans couldn't understand the rate of change that was occurring because of that change. But what do we have now with AI and advanced AI models? It's not Moore's Law. It's much, much faster than Moore's Law. If there's a CEO in this room that said, 'I looked at AI and I don't think it's a fit for our company,' and you looked at that product a year ago, well, six months ago there's a new AI model that was 10 times better than the one you rejected, and there's a new one coming out now that's 10 times better than the one six months ago. This isn't 2x. Some of these changes are occurring at a 10x pace—10x every six months, not 2x every two years. So anyone who misunderstands how rapidly AI is going to affect your business and how your need for power is going to go up, they used to say in the global brand of Kodak, they had a phrase when they would take a great picture and it was called a 'Kodak moment.' Well, there was also a Kodak moment where Kodak, one of the great brands, top 30 companies in the world, misunderstood how fast digital photography was going to overtake the film business, and Kodak basically disappeared off the planet. There will be executives, there will be companies that have their Kodak moment because they do not understand the speed at which AI is coming and the impact it's going to have on their business.
But that's not the case here. And I want to say again why we're so proud to be here today. The United States is back in force at ADIPEC, 248 US companies that are here after a bit of an absence the last four years, but we're back. We're so pleased in the relationship between the United States and the UAE. President Trump sends his greetings to all. He had such a fantastic trip here back in May. The importance of the entire Gulf region to the United States has never been more important. There's an understanding in this administration that we not only share values, but we also share a belief about energy policy. And I would describe President Trump's energy policy in two words: peace and prosperity. He is the peace president. He's resolving conflicts all over the world. Think of it: one year ago today—we're coming up on what was the election almost today—a year ago, the United States of America had a ban on LNG exports. We had a ban on building new LNG export facilities in our country. It made no sense to some of us who campaigned hard for President Trump to win. Since that time, there's been an unleashing. On day one, he turned that around. There was an unleashing of capital, an unleashing of ingenuity. New capacity has increased to be able to export LNG. Our policy is to sell energy to our friends and allies so that they don't have to buy from our adversaries. For too long—and it's happening right now—the Russia and Ukraine war is being funded by energy sales. Terrorism across this region and around the world funded by energy sales. We need to take this opportunity and grab this moment of peace, grab this inflection point we're in right now, and bring energy to everyone, bring artificial intelligence to everyone, which will improve all lives and bring peace to everyone.
We have that opportunity to do that, but we need all of your help. We need all of your help to do that. And when I think about the opportunity that's in front of us, when I think about what can happen, when I think about how incredible the future can be working together to pursue the goals that were described here today about energy abundance—because energy abundance is what we're talking about, the energy to be able to have affordable electricity and affordable power, whether it's for aviation and for industry. And we talk about AI today in the form of digital, but the wave that's coming just right behind that is physical AI. Every new manufacturing plant is going to be filled with robotics that also need more power. Distribution centers are going to be filled with automation that need more power. Any industry that you can imagine is going to need more power tomorrow than it does today.
And so with that, I would say again for policymakers, the key phrase: we need innovation, not regulation. Regulation is backward-looking. There are no history books talking about the unelected bureaucrats who came up with a great idea to try to move their ideology to restrict innovation. That book doesn't exist. We want to fill the books with innovators and inventors. And for those of you that are here today, companies that are investing in R&D to advance energy to make it more efficient, we can solve every problem together related to any issues you can imagine that people might think we might have with climate, including more accurate modeling, including better efficiency on how we do things. We can have clean air, clean water, clean soil health. We can have all of that. We can do both. As it said in Dr. Sultan's slide, we are living in a world of 'and,' not a world of 'or.'
And when we do that, I want you to understand the United States is taking a completely different 180-degree change. We are for all forms of energy that are reliable, affordable, don't require subsidy, and provide baseload, whether that's geothermal, whether it's nuclear, all of these things. But part of what that takes is also critical minerals. And as you know, there's been some disruption and some threats to the supply chain of critical minerals. In the last few weeks, the United States has announced a framework for creating a club of nations to be able to trade across that club of nations in fair trade for refining and processing critical minerals. We invite any country that is interested in having a dialogue around that to join us. This effort began two weeks ago, and we have six countries—Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, and others—that have already signed up to do this, because we cannot advance the industries that we're talking about without making sure that we all have access as a group of allies to those materials.
So in conclusion today, I want to close with a challenge to all of you and with some gratitude. I want to again share my gratitude to the leadership of the UAE, to His Highness, Your Excellency, the incredible reception we've had here from last night to yesterday to today, meeting so many people that are aligned and supportive. Dr. Sultan, again, for your leadership of ADNOC and this conference, bringing people together that are saying that there's actually something more important than the regulations, and that thing that's more important than the regulations is innovation—the innovation that will solve all the problems that the regulators are trying to solve and then some. But we have to break free the human spirit, the ability to move forward and to take this general-purpose technology of AI and apply it broadly and freely to so many different solutions. And when we do that working together, there is really no limit to what we can accomplish. We can raise the standard of living for people around the world. We can bring electricity to those that don't have it. We can bring solutions, we can lower costs, but it all depends on affordable, reliable energy. And that's what this conference is about.
So as I challenge all of you today: what can you do in your countries as policymakers? What can you do as business leaders? What can you do as entrepreneurs and innovators to have your own companies move forward more quickly? Because right now, what we need is speed to power. People have described the climate as an existential threat. Again, to help people understand US energy policy, we were focused on two existential threats: one is Iran could not have a nuclear weapon—that was an existential threat. We've made some actions against that to at least give us some breathing room. Hopefully with a dialogue, we can move to a world where we don't have to worry about that and there can be extended peace in this region. But the second thing is the free world cannot lose the AI arms race. And to not lose the AI arms race, you don't just need chips and software models; you need more electricity. And we were on a path in many parts of the free world with regulation that was actually trading off baseload for intermittent, unreliable, highly subsidized, and costly energy. We need to make sure that we are committed to having enough power to drive and win the AI arms race. That's the message here today. And again, for the policymakers, capital is going to flow. My example of the wheat mill is the trillions of dollars are going to end up in the places that have low electricity prices. If you're a business analyst, that's where you need to look. If we have parts of the world, groups of countries, that have so much regulation that they're forced to have high prices, then you're not going to see that capital. So together, let's get the capital flowing. Let's get the energy moving. Let's make sure that we can actually take the phrase and make it true that not just knowledge is power, but power is knowledge. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr. Secretary. I'd like to invite the ministers of energy of the UAE, Qatar, and Egypt to the stage for a quick panel. We're going to be discussing today 'Energy Realities: Securing the Future in an Uncertain World.' Your Excellencies, please join me. We're going to have a bit of a lightning round this morning, so I've got about 10 minutes with you gentlemen, so let's make them count. Think in soundbites. Your Excellency Suhail Al Mazrouei, the Minister of Energy here in the UAE, it's an honor and a privilege to speak with you this morning. Walk me through the latest OPEC+ decision. Are we going to see a glut in the oil market?
Well, first of all, it's not only about oil or gas anymore; I think we're talking about energy. And the three things that we need to be sure of after seeing the numbers from His Excellency Dr. Sultan's presentation and Secretary Burgum as well, there is a requirement for more energy, and same with oil and gas. The world, absolutely no doubt, would require more resources. Those resources will definitely be more oil, definitely more gas, definitely more renewable energy, and we need to make sure that the environment for investment is allowed to do that. If we're not achieving a balance between the price and what the world requires, we will not have the flow of investment enough to do it. I know some countries like the UAE and others are investing regardless because we know the demand is there, the demand is happening, but not everyone can do what we are doing. And if we are not investing on a large scale, with the decline that we see in demand and the shrinkage we see in distorted quantities which no one is talking about, we will have an issue down the road. And I have no doubt that this group is meaning well for the world, and we are trying to achieve that balance, keeping in mind we're not the only producers in the world. Our share of the world production is reducing. If we are not investing more—but I think with AI, with the data centers, we will definitely need more energy.
So you're not worried about an oil glut in 2026?
I'm not going to talk about an oversupply scenario. I can't see that. I can't justify that, and I think all of what we are seeing is more demand. We just did not quantify how much the additional requirement for power is going to demand from gas, going to demand from oil. And keep in mind, part of the gas is associated, so we will have to produce those barrels in order to get the gas.
