ADNOC Chief Squarely Blames US-Israeli War on Iran for Global Energy Crisis

The 2026 Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC) opened in Doha on Monday. It is anticipated that more than 239,000 representatives of the oil industry from over 170 countries will attend. More than 2,250 companies will exhibit during the four days of the show and around 1,800 speakers will join seminars on a range of technical issues including digitization, low carbon methodology, logistics and maritime transportation, and artificial intelligence.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The opening speaker was Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Managing Director and Group CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). In his opening remarks, he placed the blame for the world’s current energy crisis squarely on February’s US-Israeli war on Iran. Al Jaber said the intervening eight months had seen one billion barrels of crude oil drained from global inventories as a result of the closure of free movement through the Strait of Hormuz. Focusing on diesel stocks, which has been of such concern to US President Donald Trump, he said that in some markets these had fallen to their lowest seasonal levels for 35 years, as a result of which wholesale prices in the US and Europe had hit historic highs of around $220 per barrel. He added that it was not just these record-low diesel inventories that were causing concern, but there had been a loss of 600 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply. Other Topics of Interest Professor Snyder and ‘Trump’s Big Lie’ US support for Ukraine has in fact delivered major strategic and financial benefits by weakening Russia and helping avert far greater future costs. He pointed out that it was not merely the drop in stockpiles that was hitting the world but the skyrocketing cost of logistics that was impacting global prices. He said that currently the cost of shipping and transport represented more than 30% of a barrel’s value, compared to around 5% before the conflict. According to Reuters, Brent crude is currently trading around $110 a barrel, up about 50% since the start of the war on Iran. It also cited Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Saudi Aramco, as saying that stockpiles had fallen to fewer than 6 billion barrels, much of which was effectively unavailable. What needs to be done? Al Jaber listed the priorities that he considered to be essential to safeguard global energy security in order to deal with future crises, saying: “The choices we make today will determine the energy landscape a decade from now.” Firstly, he called on producers to focus on increasing their strategic oil reserves and to invest in increased refining capacity in closer proximity to customers. He called for governments, financial institutes and insurers to play their part in securing the global energy trade. He also saw the need for further investment in transport infrastructure and logistics to minimize the impact on international markets during periods of crisis. He saw the third priority as being the increased use of artificial intelligence to predict risks, improve operations and lower production costs – during the conference ADNOC announced a new partnership with OpenAI and the G42 technology group to improve oilfield development, well management and commercial operations. He finished by saying the most important priority was those engaged in the energy industries: “Fifth [priority], which is in my view the most important, is people. Because behind every barrel that arrives is a person who made sure it did. Systems don’t carry responsibility, people do.” According to Al Jaber the UAE had already put his words into practice which enabled the Emirates to weather much of the current storm: “We did not write our resilience playbook during this disruption. We wrote it years before. And at ADNOC, it did not make us immune, it made us prepared.” Kyiv Post is Ukraine’s first and oldest English news organization, reporting since 1995. Its international reach – 90% of readers are outside of Ukraine – make it truly Ukraine’s global voice.