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- Barrels of access: capital investments in global oil production will require an additional $300 billion over five years
Barrels of access: capital investments in global oil production will require an additional $300 billion over five years
The conflict in the Persian Gulf, which triggered a rise in oil prices and the largest energy crisis in history, will lead to increased investment in production in the next five years. Their additional volume in the 2026-2030s will amount to $300 billion, or $60 billion per year, analysts have calculated for Izvestia. The Middle East will be the main recipient of these investments: the region may account for about $185 billion in investments, which accounts for about 61% of global growth. Russia will account for only about $7 billion, or 2.2%. Among the reasons, analysts cite the strategy of Russian oil companies to keep production at 520 million tons per year for the next five years.
How will investments in oil production change
The war in the Middle East has led to the biggest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Flows through the Strait of Hormuz have dropped from 20 million barrels per day to a minimum, due to the lack of a way to bypass this critically important route. The price of Brent rose from a pre-conflict $69 per barrel to a peak of $126 on April 30 and a projected $106 on average for the second quarter of 2026.
According to Dmitry Kasatkin, managing partner of Kasatkin Consulting, the historical sensitivity of production investments to the oil price is in the range of 0.3–0.5.
— In other words, a 10% increase in price usually results in a 3-5% increase in investment. The share of oilfield services in total production costs is about 60%. At the same time, it takes from six months to a year between the change in the pricing environment and the revision of the budgets of national companies. In 2025, global capital expenditures totaled $570 billion. Our model shows that in 2026-2030, additional investments in production will amount to $301 billion, and the growth of the service market will amount to $165 billion," the expert said in a conversation with Izvestia.
The main recipient of additional investments, according to him, will be the Middle East. The region will account for $185 billion in production investments and $102 billion in oilfield services market growth, or 61%. According to him, more than 70% of all damage in the region was caused by the mining infrastructure. China ranks second: $86 billion and $47 billion, respectively, or 29%. The United States will account for 7.4%, or $22 billion in additional investments and $12.5 billion in the oilfield services market.
— The depletion of the most productive fields in the Permian Basin (USA), the rising cost of drilling and the wave of mergers in 2024 worth about $250 billion actually extinguished the previous shale investment cycle. In general, American production is entering a stagnation phase and will soon begin to decline," the analyst says.
According to him, Russia will account for only $7 billion, or 2.2% of global growth. Among the reasons, the expert cites the challenges of maintaining the current production level at 520 million tons per year for the next five years, responsibility to the budget, as well as managing the increased debt burden.
What were the investments in oil production
A lot of attention has recently been paid to the problem of underinvestment in the oil industry. Three years ago, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak noted that "the global energy industry needs to return investments in the industry for a stable supply of hydrocarbons." At that time, according to him, this figure was estimated at $1 trillion.
In 2026, in his author's column for the Energy Policy magazine, he noted that investments in exploration and production in 2025, according to preliminary estimates, amounted to about $420 billion, which is one third less than the level that was observed 10 years ago.
According to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), in 2025, investments in production amounted to $480.6 billion, and in 2026 they will exceed the mark of $500 billion and reach $508 billion. But the cartel made these predictions even before the conflict in the Middle East began.
In their annual World Oil Outlook (WOO-2025) report, alliance experts argued that in 2025-2050, investments of $18.2 trillion, or $700 billion per year, are needed to meet growing global oil demand and compensate for declining production in mature fields. This includes exploration and production of $14.9 trillion, or $573 billion per year, refining — $2 trillion, or $77 billion per year, transportation — $1.3 trillion, or $50 billion per year.
According to OPEC's forecast, global demand for black gold in 2050 will reach 122.9 million barrels per day, which is 18.5% more than in 2024.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), in turn, predicted that investments of about $540 billion per year in the search for new deposits would be needed to maintain oil and gas production levels by 2050.
According to the Ministry of Energy, capital investments of vertically integrated Russian companies in production by the end of 2025 amounted to 1.934 trillion rubles, which is 0.8% more than in 2024. Such data were provided in the presentation to the report of the Minister of Energy Sergey Tsivilev at the meeting of the final board of the department.
Izvestia has sent inquiries to this ministry and Russia's largest oil companies.
Alternative opinions and perspectives of Russia
According to Valery Andrianov, associate professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, in the Middle East, of course, additional capital will need to be raised to restore the destroyed mining, processing and transport infrastructure. In his opinion, the main investors will not be global companies, but Arab sovereign wealth funds of the so-called "oil five": PIF (Saudi Arabia), QIA (Qatar), KIA (Kuwait), ADIA and Mubadala (UAE). By the beginning of hostilities, they managed assets totaling $3.5–4 trillion, which is about a quarter of the reserves of all sovereign wealth funds in the world ($15 trillion).
— They have become the largest investors not only in the region, but also globally, investing in the economies of the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the USA. Partial repatriation of capital is likely to begin now, meaning that the Gulf states will send funds from sovereign wealth funds to cover losses from the war and rebuild the devastated economy. As a result, huge investments from other markets will be "withdrawn", including the United States, which may lose at least $2 trillion of Arab capital, the analyst stressed.
Valery Andrianov believes that the current crisis is becoming a driver for the more active introduction of alternative energy and the creation of local distributed energy systems that do not depend on cross-border supplies of hydrocarbons.
— We can talk about both renewable energy sources and peaceful nuclear energy. Therefore, in the medium term, this may put pressure on the volume of oil demand. Against the background of such unstable prospects, large corporations are unlikely to increase their investments in oil and gas, the Izvestia interlocutor believes.
According to Tamara Safonova, Director General of the Independent Analytical Agency for the Oil and Gas Sector, investors are still waiting for a settlement of the Middle East conflict and an assessment of the timing of the restoration of the destroyed infrastructure of the exporting countries of the Persian Gulf.
A new investment cycle in global oil production is highly likely to begin as early as 2027, said Yuri Stankevich, Deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Energy. At the same time, while maintaining geopolitical risks, the real need for investments may approach $800 billion per year, he noted.
According to Valery Andrianov, Russia does not yet have such wide opportunities to increase investments in the fuel and energy sector, which is determined both by the general economic situation in the country and the current sanctions and logistical restrictions on domestic hydrocarbon exports. In addition, the level of taxation in the industry, as the expert notes, and the still high Central Bank rate do not contribute to strengthening the investment potential of Russian oil and gas.
Nevertheless, according to Yuri Stankevich, even in the current circumstances, Russia has its advantages: the operating cost of traditional production, the flexibility of export logistics to the East, and the experience of working under sanctions. According to him, our country can be competitive at prices of $70-90 per barrel, especially in mature fields. And in the next five years, oil prices will remain in the range of $75-110 per barrel.
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