Remarks by Ziad T. Al-Murshed at the 2025 Money 20/20 conference

أصحاب المعالي، الضيوف الكرام، السيدات والسادة الحضور
السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته


Ladies and gentlemen.

It is my honor to join you at Money 20/20 for the first ever Middle-East edition, right here in Riyadh,  And it is a great pleasure to share the stage this week with so many distinguished leaders.

The world of energy has always been at the cutting-edge of progress. But now it is moving forward at speeds none of us has seen before – accelerated by a digital revolution, and led by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. 

Needless to say, this revolution is disrupting all sectors. And for energy, this disruption is amplified. On one hand, the digital revolution is bringing substantial growth in energy demand.

AI and digital centers will be responsible for about 20% of total world electricity demand growth between now and 2030. 

Demand from Data Centers and AI in 2024 was around 1,000 terawatt-hours, which is about the total electricity demand of Japan today. Demand in 2030 is expected to be over 2,000 terawatt-hours, which is about the total power demand of India today.

On the other hand, this same revolution that will substantially contribute to the growth in demand, is also going to enable the energy sector to avail more energy supply. The sector wasted no time in harnessing digital technology and AI to make operations more efficient, safe and reliable.

And more value is still there for the industry to extract, as energy producers embrace change and create the tools and skills necessary for the digital economy. There are many areas and use cases where this value can be generated.

In the oil and gas sector, the largest value potential is actually in operations, and within operations, the largest value potential is in the sub-surface — in the oil and gas reservoirs. Applying AI in this field has the potential to massively increase the capability to find more oil and gas, and reduce development costs, and to increase recovery rates so that more of the found oil and gas is produced.

THIS is where the AI revolution is enabling the energy industry to increase supply to help meet the energy demand that the AI revolution itself is increasing substantially! But generating this value is data intensive, and requires massive computing power. 

In the energy industry, especially in oil and gas, this requires massive investments in sub-surface data acquisition and super computing power. It also requires investments in the oil and gas wells to install technologies that enable the actual optimization.

These investments are so large, that relatively few industry players can justify making them — mainly players that have sole access to oil and gas reserves in order to be able to optimize them.

Without sole access, optimization of a reservoir is not possible because neighbouring producers would be drawing from the same reservoirs at maximum rates, Which is why the required massive investments in technology is not justified for any single producer among a group of producers that are accessing the same reservoir.

This is why sole operators have higher potential to extract higher value and capture this higher value from applying AI tools to the sub-surface. Now, being the sole operator of some of the world’s largest reservoirs, Aramco is at the forefront of the new digital revolution.

Today, we are positioned to advance the latest technology because we have been capturing the data and building the digital infrastructure required to embrace this revolution.

• We have more than 90 years of propriety data from our extensive geological, seismic and process surveys,
• And every day we collect information from about 10 billion data points across our facilities, which goes straight to our engineering centers.

We operate a diverse set of supercomputers, including Dammam 7 – one of the largest in the region – and a number of NVIDIA Superpods – all which help us create, train and run AI models.

We also understand the people and skills required to meet the challenge – our Artificial Intelligence provides. Our artificial intelligence is only as good as our human intelligence. We employ hundreds of data scientists and other digital experts.

And we, of course, employ engineers, geophysicists and other technical people as well. 

These teams have distinct skill-sets. And they are working closely together – literally in the same location – to develop the right fit-for-purpose solutions for us, ensuring we maximize the benefits of AI applications.

So with Big Data, digital infrastructure and talent, AI is taking us into a new world of opportunities in terms of energy production and supply. And they increasingly help us to deliver every bit of energy with the lowest possible cost, while continuing to lower emissions.

• Our AI models are analyzing drilling plans and geological data to recommend the best options for our engineers. Once this would take weeks or months. But not now.
• Digital technology is also helping us conduct autonomous drilling operations, reinforcing our ability to continue producing lower cost barrels and being one of the lowest upstream carbon intensity producers of hydrocarbon products among our peers.
• It can also help us operate more safely by allowing us to predict the future health of our equipment and minimize failures before they happen. Which means it is improving safety and reliability of our operations.
• Last year we announced the launch of our own industrial Large Language Model. Trained on decades of Aramco data. This is proprietary Aramco data. We believe it will significantly boost our productivity and transform the way we work.

These and many other digital use cases contributed to $4 billion in technology realized value we saw as a company last year in 2024 – more than half of this was due to digital and AI solutions.  

Now, this is for one year only, and with the resources we have today. As the time-scale for this revolution is measured in nano-seconds, imagine what we will be able to do tomorrow.

As a matter of fact, imagine what we will be able to do with the Artificial General Intelligence models in the near future. Of course, getting there speaks to the spirit of this conference – how do we continue to finance this revolution and its coming growth? 

Money 20/20 is a place where finance professionals are considering this global-scale challenge, and can help enable some solutions. Today, energy, digital technology, and finance are converging in ways that we think will shape the future of the world for generations.

Ladies and gentlemen.

There is a quote attributed to the great American car maker Henry Ford. It is claimed he once said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

But he did not ask, he innovated. He used technology and took a great leap forward. 

THIS is why we are not simply asking our businesses, as potential users of AI, to generate use cases and submit them to AI specialists – they will certainly keep asking for faster horses.

Instead, we are co-locating our AI specialists with our operations teams and our finance teams, so that together they come up with solutions — Now, teams that run businesses know what they need, and AI specialists know what is possible.

Together, they can create much more useful tools to take value creation to the next level. To make sure we are fully seizing this transformation opportunity, we must rethink how we operate our businesses, how we design our operating models, and how we develop and upskill our talent, 

And ultimately, how we meet the energy needs of a new digital era, where we must match growing energy demand with sufficient supply. Yes, the pace of challenge is rapid. Yes, it can feel daunting. And yes, those who fail to adapt will be left behind.

But the rewards that come with accepting this journey are monumental, and enormously exciting. 

Thank you.

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