DP World, energy and AI: five predictions for 2025

BELGA via Reuters Connect

It’s that time of year when you dust off the crystal ball, rummage through the runes and check the alignment of the planets to make predictions about what the coming 12 months will bring.

I will not dwell too long on how I fared with my forecasts for 2024. This time last year I laid out “five outrageous predictions”, and I can claim some success – they were outrageously incorrect.

As we move into the new year, I see that a Gulf oil company did not buy into US shale, there was no sign of the dollar peg unravelling with Gulf currencies, there are still two major stock exchanges in the UAE, and Saudi Arabia’s PIF did not make the expected big move into the Hollywood movie industry.

Forecasting may be a mug’s game, but the beauty of it is that those predictions can stay confidently on the table for 2025, and I will seek plaudits when they finally happen this year.

Indeed, I am so sure in my foresight that I will offer, with 100 per cent conviction, another batch of nailed-on prognoses that will happen sometime in 2025 – or maybe sometime between now and 2030 anyhow. Here we go.

1 DP World, the UAE-based global ports and logistics operator, will seek to become a public listed company once more. DP World has had a convoluted stock market history, with shares once traded on the Dubai Financial Market and for a while the London Stock Exchange. Chairman Sultan Bin Sulayem decided to take the company private in 2020 to concentrate on global expansion and debt-reduction, but I hear that robust market performances and the healthy IPO pipeline in the UAE will cause him to think again about the benefits of a wider public share register.

2 A Gulf national oil company will announce a long-term strategic relationship with BP involving a significant shareholding. This notion – first floated by Javier Blas of Bloomberg and endorsed by Robin Mills of Qamar Energy – will gain traction in 2025. It would allow BP to solve its strategic dilemma of whether it is an oil company or a renewables platform, and would give the Gulf partner access to its significant hydrocarbon assets as well as its market-leading trading business. Adnoc of the UAE – which already has a close relationship with BP – is the favourite, but don’t rule out Saudi Aramco or QatarEnergy.

3 There will be an increasing backlash against climate change as a driving force in global strategic policymaking. This is not just the result of the election of denier Donald Trump, though that will certainly further enable the small but growing number of climate change dissidents. Many of the world’s biggest financial institutions are rethinking the wisdom of ESG investment principles, and unrealistic commitments to net zero targets or electrification goals look set to be the next shibboleths to be discarded. Cop30 in Brazil could be the last global climate change summit.

4 Chinese demand for oil products will near a plateau in 2025. That will be an event of historic significance for global energy markets, and will force producers to adjust upstream and downstream strategies to take the new reality into account. Electric vehicle sales in China are forecast to outstrip internal combustion engine sales for the first time. Whether or not next year is the “peak” in China oil demand – which has been the driving force of global oil demand for the past two decades – or that takes place a couple of years later is a moot point. But the writing is on the wall. Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” philosophy will further complicate the outlook for the producers.  

5 2025 will witness a battle between humans and machines on an epochal scale. Who says so? ChatGPT, of course, which responded thus to a question about big AI trends in the coming year: “The single biggest threat to the rapid development of AI in 2025 is likely to be regulatory and ethical challenges, particularly around issues of governance, trust and safety. As AI technologies become more powerful and pervasive, they will inevitably raise concerns that could slow or even derail progress.”

In other words, it’s going to be Us v Them in a Terminator-style confrontation. Good luck, humanity.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia