Energy executives see growing investment needs amid price and geopolitical uncertainty

Growing energy consumption is opening up investment opportunities, but industry leaders speaking at the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi said uncertainty over oil prices and geopolitical risks is making decisions more difficult. Their assessments highlighted the gap between the need for additional infrastructure and the challenges of turning that demand into profitable projects.

Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli offered an optimistic view of the longer-term outlook, citing artificial intelligence, population growth and developing countries as sources of rising energy demand. Speaking with CNBC's Dan Murphy on "Access Middle East," he described a potential "demand decade" and said capital investment should increase over time as greater consumption requires more infrastructure.

RWE CEO Markus Krebber also identified AI and electrification as drivers of electricity demand. However, the head of the German energy company said geopolitical tensions, pressure on supply chains and higher interest rates were complicating investment choices. In a separate discussion at ADIPEC, he said planned increases in computing capacity and the electricity needed to run it would materialize, though the pace would probably be slow.

For BP CEO Meg O'Neill, the considerable variation in forecasts for global energy demand is a significant factor in assessing investments. She said new oil and gas developments can require years of work before production begins and can then operate for decades. Unpredictable oil prices add another consideration, with O'Neill saying BP needs to prepare its business for a lower-price environment.

Simonelli expects industry activity to grow by a low-single-digit percentage in 2027. He said the Middle East conflict had demonstrated the importance of making energy infrastructure more resilient. That would require additional storage capacity and pipelines, alongside efforts to remove existing choke points in the energy system.

Schneider Electric CEO Olivier Blum said the conflict had slowed some projects in the Persian Gulf. Despite those delays, he told CNBC that the opportunity to build more infrastructure had increased over the medium term, offering another indication of investment needs even as regional disruption affects project progress.

The outlook for oil supply presents a further complication. Richard Bronze, co-founder and head of geopolitics at energy consultancy Energy Aspects, told CNBC in a separate interview that forecasts, including his firm's, point to an oversupplied oil market in 2027 and 2028. That projection depends on Middle Eastern flows returning to normal.