By Ian Dollar, Analyst, Dubai
Abu Dhabi once again became the capital of energy conversation during the 2025 edition of ADIPEC. Artificial intelligence, geopolitics, and the needs of a growing world took center stage over and above the climate-centric orthodoxies that have weighed upon the industry in recent years.
Ideology does not power innovation. Energy does.
It all began with a new admonition, “Tune out the noise. Track the signal.” So said His Excellency Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, who also serves as ADNOC’s Managing Director and Group CEO. It was an elegant way to address the range of concerns that confront the industry today, including pressure from activists and regulators on climate and fears of a looming supply glut in oil.
As to the oil oversupply projected to keep prices low into next year, this is a notion that was disputed by government ministers from various OPEC+ nations; even as the bloc plans to pause its war for market share for the first quarter of 2026.
“Power is knowledge.”
US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, speaking in his capacity as Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, echoed Dr. Al Jaber’s sentiments with a memorable saying of his own. Commandeering the old adage, ‘knowledge is power,’ Secretary Burgum proclaimed that due to the AI revolution, “power is knowledge.” “For the first time, we can manufacture intelligence.”
The Trump Administration’s view was heard loud and clear: America’s priority is to win the AI race against China, to facilitate peace in troubled regions through economic growth, and to place climate concerns on the backburner – at least in the way climate is traditionally discussed. Secretary Burgum’s remarks amounted to a call for accentuating an all-of-the-above energy mix, albeit without going so far as to expressly endorse perennial Trump bugaboos like offshore wind.
In short, ADIPEC’s record-breaking crowd – nearly 240,000 people over the course of the event’s four-day run – were meant to come away with an absolute faith in innovation: innovation powered by more energy. The idea is that AI, a technology whose youthful growth spurts we are still bearing witness to, will soon give humanity a massive edge in solving the great challenges in medical research, in finding ways to bring forward developing economies, and – yes – in innovating our way through the risks of climate change.
Energy addition, not transition
This innovation cannot occur without massive public and private investment in energy grid infrastructure. Data centers are enormous consumers of energy and we’re only going to build more of them for the foreseeable future. Slogans like ‘energy dominance’ or Trump favorite ‘drill baby, drill’ have inspired a certain degree of confusion and even derision in boardrooms around the globe. In the most immediate sense, there is merit to such pause: US producers, and particularly the nation’s smallest operators, can only bear so much downward price pressure. But if we view these as global calls to action rather than adhering strictly to the “America First” interpretation, it begins to make sense. ‘Drill baby, drill’ is precisely what the world is going to keep doing.
