Your Royal Highness, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a pleasure to be back in Riyadh for the fourteenth edition of the IEA-IEF-OPEC Symposium on Energy Outlooks.

I would like to begin by thanking His Royal Highness Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al Saud, Minister of Energy of Saudi Arabia, for his warm welcome and valuable insights.

Your Royal Highness, the producer-consumer dialogue that you have championed throughout your career remains of paramount importance. It is central in helping to enable a sustainable energy future for all.

In addition, I would like to thank IEF Secretary General Joseph McMonigle and his team for hosting this year’s symposium, which offers a timely opportunity to engage in crucial dialogue on energy security, technology, outlooks and the market.

Allow me also to extend warm greetings to our co-host, Mr. Keisuke Sadamori, Director, Energy Markets and Security Division at IEA, and to all esteemed ministers, guest speakers, and contributors.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Since we met last year, the global economy has continued to face numerous challenges, including restrictive monetary policies, labour market constraints, and some geopolitical headwinds.

Oil demand in 2023, however, proved resilient with global growth of 2.5 million barrels a day (mb/d), and non-OPEC liquids supply growth at 2.4 mb/d. 

The volatile environment we have witnessed requires constant vigilance and prudent policymaking from both producers and consumers alike, such as that seen through the Declaration of Cooperation between OPEC and non-OPEC participating countries.

It also underlines the importance of maintaining the cooperative spirit of the Cancun Ministerial Declaration, especially in terms of fostering mutual understanding, promoting stable and transparent energy markets, and narrowing differences and understanding on global energy issues among energy producing, consuming and transit countries.

In this respect, researchers at the US Federal Reserve recently found – and I quote – that “OPEC communication effectively reduces oil price volatility and favors market stability… our analysis indicates that market participants assess OPEC communications as providing an important signal to the crude oil market.”

Moreover, it stresses that “fundamental factors related to supply and demand drive OPEC’s public signal.”

Moving forward, rest assured that OPEC will continue to foster stability in the oil market and adhere to the spirit of Cancun, all the while working for the benefit of producers, consumers, and the global economy.

Towards this end, impartial, data-based and fact-driven analysis remains essential in grounding policymaking in realistic thinking, and keeping politics and ideology out of decision making.

In this respect, the growing gap between different scenarios further elevates the need to engage in dialogue on energy outlooks, especially as today’s investments and planning will dictate the success – or lack thereof – of the world’s efforts to maintain energy security tomorrow. 

Ministers,

There is a simplistic narrative often heard in which the oil industry and renewables are competitors in a zero sum game, where the success of one represents a mortal threat to the other. This is simply not the case, especially as – alongside renewables – hydrocarbons will be required well into the 21st Century for many reasons. In the interest of time, I would like to mention two of them.

Firstly, there are inextricable links between the petrochemical and oil industries, and the renewable industry. Wind turbines today cannot be mass-produced without fibreglass, resin, or plastic, for example, ensuring that calls to stop investing in hydrocarbons are as unconducive to developing renewables as they are to maintaining energy security.

Secondly, it is an inescapable fact that as the world economy grows and populations increase, and given the pressing need to ensure universal energy access, primary energy demand will rise. In OPEC’s latest World Oil Outlook, energy demand increases by 23% through 2045.

This underscores the need for all energies, with renewables expected to witness the fastest growth rate, and oil retaining the largest share of the energy mix.

In this respect, technological innovation to reduce emissions will remain a core area of focus for OPEC, as epitomized by some 50 oil and gas producers – including many from OPEC Member Countries – joining the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter at COP28. In doing so, they pledged to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050, end routine flaring by 2030, and curb methane emissions to near-zero by 2030.

With this, allow me to conclude by thanking our hosts once more. OPEC values its cooperation with the IEF and IEA, and desires strengthened producer-consumer dialogue moving forward. After all, we owe it to tomorrow’s generations to deliver accurate energy policymaking today. 

Thank you.