The oil industry and OPEC will attend COP28 climate summit

Representatives from the oil industry and from OPEC will attend the COP28 climate summit in Dubai next month, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said on October 10.

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“The oil industry will be at COP, and we will be there,” Al Ghais said at an energy event in Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as carried by Reuters.

OPEC’s secretary general will also attend the climate summit, he said.

“I hope all voices will be at the table at COP28,” Al Ghais said.

COP28 President-Designate is Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the biggest national oil companies.

At the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi last week, Al Jaber called on the oil and gas industry to play a crucial role in progressing decarbonization and the energy transition.

“This industry can and must help drive the solutions. For too long, this industry has been viewed as part of the problem, that it’s not doing enough and, in some cases, even blocking progress,” Al Jaber said at the opening of the energy conference.

“This is your opportunity to show the world that, in fact, you are central to the solution,” he added.

OPEC’s Al Ghais, for his part, wrote in OPEC’s annual World Oil Outlook published this week that “Calls to stop investments in new oil projects are misguided and could lead to energy and economic chaos.”

“History is replete with numerous examples of turmoil that should serve as a warning for what occurs when policymakers fail to acknowledge energy’s interwoven complexities,” Al Ghais noted.

The world needs $14 trillion in cumulative investments in the oil sector by 2045 to ensure market stability and avoid energy and economic chaos, OPEC said in the report, in which it also raised its long-term oil demand forecast to 116 million bpd in 2045, up by 6 million bpd from the demand for that year expected in the 2022 outlook.