The global energy industry must rethink how it builds and delivers secure supply, Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and Managing Director and Group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), said at the opening of ADIPEC 2026 in Abu Dhabi on Monday.
Delivering the keynote in the presence of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President, Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Presidential Court, Dr. Al Jaber said the disruptions of the past year had exposed vulnerabilities that could no longer be treated as specialist concerns.
“For decades, energy security was a question for specialists. It was debated in rooms like this, by people like us, in a language that few needed to learn. This year, every family, every farmer, every industry and every business owner is asking about it.”
The scale of the supply damage was stark, he said. Since the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, nearly one billion barrels of crude have been drained from global inventories. Diesel stocks in some markets have fallen to their lowest seasonal level in 35 years. Others face a 600 billion cubic feet LNG supply gap. Logistics costs, previously under five per cent of the cost of a barrel, now exceed 30 per cent. “Energy security is not only measured at the point of production. It is now also measured at the point of delivery,” Dr. Al Jaber said.
Against that backdrop, he set out five priorities for the industry: expanding strategic storage and flexible refining capacity closer to consumer markets; building route-to-market infrastructure before it is needed; shifting from automated operations to intelligent systems that can anticipate risk; creating the policy and financial conditions that attract capital; and investing in people. “Systems don’t carry responsibility, people do,” he said.
On the technology side, Dr. Al Jaber announced a new agreement between ADNOC, OpenAI and G42, guided by Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
The partnership will apply OpenAI’s frontier models to ADNOC’s field development, well management and commercial operations, making ADNOC, the company said, the first energy company to deploy OpenAI Frontier.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attended the opening ceremony. “From the moment ChatGPT was born, the world has asked what energy can do for AI. And now, together, we will find out what AI can do for energy,” Dr. Al Jaber said.
He credited the UAE’s preparedness to decisions made well before this year’s disruptions, pointing to ADNOC’s investments in integrated trading, logistics and XRG’s global gas and chemicals portfolio. “We did not write our resilience playbook during this disruption. We wrote it years before.”
ADIPEC 2026, held under the patronage of President His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and hosted by ADNOC at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre, is expected to draw a record attendance of over 239,000 participants from more than 170 countries, with 2,250 exhibiting companies, 1,800 speakers and 30 country pavilions.
