ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates opened its annual oil-and-gas summit on Monday as it plans to increase the country’s energy output as global prices stay volatile and world politics remain uncertain ahead of the U.S. presidential election.
The massive Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference comes after the UAE just last year hosted the United Nations COP28 climate talks. Those talks ended with a call by nearly 200 countries to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels — the first time the conference made that crucial pledge.
But the UAE as a whole still plans to increase its production capacity of oil to 5 million barrels a day in the coming years as it pursues more cleaner energies at home. Meanwhile, UAE officials have made a point to dodge any questions about the U.S. election while maintaining their close ties to Russia despite Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
“Allow me to say that we in the United Arab Emirates will always choose partnership over polarization, dialogue over division and peace over provocation,” said Sultan al-Jaber, who heads the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., or ADNOC, and who also led the COP28 talks in Dubai.
Crude oil prices have been depressed this year. Benchmark Brent crude traded around $74 a barrel on Monday as prices have dropped after concerns over the ongoing Mideast wars growing into a regional conflict faded in recent days.
Slowing economic growth in China and ample supply in the market are additionally dragging down prices.
In his speech opening the summit, al-Jaber pointed to artificial intelligence as a future technology that could be deployed by the energy industry — and one with a voracious appetite for electricity. “No single source of energy is going to be enough to meet this demand,” he said. He called for a variety of energy sources to meet that challenge, including fossil fuels.