OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais urges $17.4 trillion in hydrocarbon investments by 2050 to meet rising global demand and offset declining production rates

OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais has underscored the critical need for substantial investment in the hydrocarbon sector, estimating a cumulative requirement of $17.4 trillion by 2050.

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This investment, according to Al Ghais, is essential to meet the continuously increasing global energy demand and to compensate for natural production declines, which necessitate an additional five million barrels per day on average each year just to maintain current overall supply levels.

Al Ghais made these remarks at the 11th Joint IEA-IEF-OPEC Workshop on the Interactions between Physical and Financial Energy Markets, held at the OPEC Secretariat in Vienna.

He emphasized OPEC’s consistent call for greater investments in the oil industry, highlighting that the organization’s actions, particularly within the framework of the Declaration of Cooperation (DoC), aim to foster an investment-enabling environment characterized by sustainable stability in the oil market.

The high-level workshop, chaired by HE Al Ghais, HE Jassim Alshirawi, Secretary General of the International Energy Forum (IEF), and Toril Bosoni, Head of the Oil Industry and Markets Division of the International Energy Agency (IEA), addressed crucial topics including recent factors influencing oil market volatility, strategies for exploring global oil trade flows, inter-regional arbitrages and their impact on crude benchmarks, and financing opportunities for oil and gas developments.

OPEC’s latest World Oil Outlook (WOO) projects a significant 24 per cent increase in global primary energy demand by 2050, driven by population growth, urbanization, an expanding middle class, and emerging energy-intensive technologies, as well as the imperative to provide energy access to billions worldwide.

Al Ghais stressed the necessity of embracing all energy sources and leveraging all available technologies to address the interconnected challenges of energy accessibility, rising demand, security, affordability, and emissions reduction.

Jassim Alshirawi of the IEF echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the need for predictable investments in both hydrocarbons and clean energy technologies, along with close collaboration on market transparency to navigate the energy trilemma and geoeconomic shifts effectively.