RIYADH: All sources of energy - with oil and gas at the core — will be needed to meet the rapid increase in world energy demand by 2050, Aramco CEO Khalid A. Al-Falih underlined before the World Energy Congress (WEC) 2013 in Daegu, Korea.

Aramco is banking on the old adage that the energy needs of a growing population only goes up and up. With the world population projected to increase by 2 billion to 9 billion people by 2050, and the global economy expected to be three or even four times larger, global energy consumption is bound to rise significantly, Al-Falih stressed late last week.

Even with advanced energy management and efficiency programs that could lower consumption (and indeed the intensity), the overall global demand is expected to be substantially higher by 2050, driven by the rising global population empowered by prosperity, he asserted.

Highlighting that there was no dearth of resources, he said a total of 1.3 trillion barrels of oil has been produced over the last 120 years and another 1.6tr barrels worth of deposits can be pumped out at present. “What is important is that the deposits are growing every year.”

Global oil production volume stands at around 91 million barrels a day. “In 20 years it will be 110m barrels,” he added, with Aramco boosting its daily output by more than 1.5m barrels a day.

He went on to emphasise that the world needs all - conventional, non-conventional, renewable and the non-renewable, underlining there is room for everyone in the energy industry to prosper “under one roof.”

And then asserting that that Saudi Arabia would continue to play a lead role in the global energy industry in the decades to come, Falih underlined: “As part of our drive to become the world’s most integrated energy company, we have increased our annual capital budget tenfold - from $4 to $40bn - over the last 10 years.”

Identifying this as the prime reason for Aramco’s ability to stabilise the markets, if and when required, he quipped: “In the past two years alone, we have swung our production by more than 1.5m bpd in order to address market supply imbalances.”

Saudi Arabia is currently also endeavouring to expand its asset base — so as to continue to be the energy king pin in the years and decades to come too. “We are on track to increase the average of our conventional oil recoveries to 70 per cent, which is more than double the current world average,” Al-Falih said. “Resources are, in fact, abundant.”

Despite talk of a glut, Saudi Arabia plans to maintain output capacity at 12.5m bpd through new fields including the offshore Manifa deposit. The company also plans to add 550,000 barrels a day of capacity from the Shaybah and Khurais fields by 2017. These will help Aramco replace the oil that’s no longer being pumped from aging fields, Al-Falih conceded.

And with the US shale boom spreading “far and wide”, Al-Falih went on to spice up the audience by saying — Saudi Arabia was going ahead with its shale revolution, to be among the first countries outside North America to use shale gas for power generation and thereby save more of its crude oil for lucrative exports.

“Only two years after launching our own unconventional gas program, in the northern region of Saudi Arabia, we are ready to commit gas for the development of a 1,000 megawatt power plant which will feed a massive phosphate mining and manufacturing sector,” said Falih.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has earlier given an estimate of over 600 trillion cubic feet of unconventional gas reserves, more than double its proven conventional reserves.

That would put Saudi Arabia fifth in a 32-country shale gas reserves ranking compiled for the US Energy Information Administration.

Despite odds, Al-Falih is looking at future — with a confident smile.