The 9th OPEC International Seminar at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna sees the launch of the World Oil Outlook (WOO) 2025. With over 1,000 participants attending, including ministers, CEOs, policymakers, academics, analysts and media from around the world, the launch provides a global platform to highlight the Organization’s views on future energy pathways that are credible and driven by sound data and robust analysis.
This year’s WOO reinforces a theme that OPEC has emphasized in recent years: the need for an ‘all-encompassing’ approach to future energy pathways and energy security, closely linked with efforts to reduce emissions and ensure sustainable development. The WOO 2025 does not view any energy in isolation or dismiss anything. Instead, it takes a holistic view, encompassing the realities we see before us, as well as an appraisal of a host of uncertainties, economic, policy-driven and geopolitical, to build a picture centered around a number of key energy issues.
Firstly, the world will require more energy in the decades to come. In this year’s WOO, global energy demand is set to expand by 23% to 2050, driven by expanding economic growth, rising populations, increasing urbanization, new energy-intensive industries like artificial intelligence, and the need to bring energy to the billions without it.
Here, we must remember that the future of energy means different things to different people. For those without energy access, it means the need for basic services like lighting, clean cooking options, and the possibility of owning a motorized vehicle or taking a flight. In this regard, it is important to note that it is the developing world – the non-OECD – which sees almost all energy demand growth over the outlook period.
Secondly, the history of energy is one of additions, not subtractions. Indeed, the reality today is that the world consumes more wood, oil, coal, gas, in fact, all energies, than ever before. Moreover, energies tend to complement each other – the rise of coal saw the world use more wood; the rise of oil saw the world use more coal; and renewables and electric vehicles require a host of oil products for their development and use.
In this regard, it is important to note that the combined percentage of oil, gas and coal in the energy mix was around 80% in 2024, only a little less than when OPEC was founded in 1960, despite energy consumption increasing more than five-fold over that time.
Positively, it has become increasingly clear to many policymakers in recent years that the narrative of swiftly phasing out oil and gas has been seen for what it is: unworkable, and a fantasy. Many initial net-zero policies promoted unrealistic timelines or had little regard for energy security, affordability or feasibility – this mindset is shifting.
Thirdly, oil and the petroleum products derived from it continue to provide immense benefits to billions. Without them, cars, buses and trucks would be stranded, airplanes would be grounded, the construction sector would all but grind to a halt, food production would be devastated, and many health-related products would be difficult to produce.
Oil underpins the global economy and is central to our daily lives. Out to 2050, we see oil demand continuing to expand and reaching 123 million barrels a day (mb/d). There is no peak oil demand on the horizon.
And fourthly, the WOO emphasizes the need to ramp up efforts across the board to reduce emissions, advance efficiencies and implement lower carbon solutions. In this regard, OPEC Member Countries, and the oil industry, in general, are already playing a proactive and constructive role by undertaking investments in areas such as carbon capture utilization and storage, direct air capture and the circular carbon economy.
What all this underscores is the need for major investments in all energies and technologies, coupled with the need to maintain a realistic understanding of the needs of all peoples. This is a message that OPEC has consistently delivered in recent years.
To put the key issue of investment in context, for the oil industry alone, we see global oil industry investment requirements of $18.2 trillion out to 2050. It is vital that these investments are made for consumers and producers everywhere, as well as for the effective functioning of the global economy at large.
Why? Because it is clear that the world needs all energies to deliver the energy security and energy availability that it desires, and all technologies to achieve the emissions reductions it requires. As such, the need to embrace a prudent approach to future energy pathways for nations and peoples around the world is also central to this year’s WOO.
In looking ahead, the platform for building a sustainable energy future not only comes from stability in energy markets, which remains the core focus of OPEC and its partners in the Declaration of Cooperation, but also through all industry stakeholders working together. Collaboration is imperative, data transparency is vital and energy realities must be recognized and prioritized.
The WOO 2025 provides a basis for this, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have been involved in putting it together. We are proud of this publication and the key insights it offers into the challenges and opportunities shaping our shared energy future, and trust that it will serve as a useful tool for policymakers and experts everywhere.
Haitham Al Ghais
Secretary General