The global oil and gas industry needs to invest more than $20tn over the next 25 years to meet expected growth in demand and compensate for the natural depletion in developed oil assets, Saudi Aramco’s chief executive officer has said.

Speaking at the CERAWeek conference in Houston, Amin Nasser said the industry has already lost $1tn of investments since the oil price downturn from 2014 to 2016.

Future investments needed “will only come if investors are convinced that oil will be allowed to compete on a level playing field, that oil is worth so much more, and that oil is here for the foreseeable future,” Nasser was quoted by media reports as saying.

He noted that about 99 per cent of passenger vehicles on the road use internal combustion engines, even hybrid vehicles, and said electricity produced for battery-powered vehicles comes through power generation, which is still dominated by coal, particularly in markets like India and China.

Nasser said that even with the growth of electric vehicles, increased demand from petrochemical markets over the next two decades will necessitate additional investment and need for crude oil.

He noted “even conservative estimates” suggest the need for about 20 million barrels per day of new capacity in the next five years.

He said he was confident that oil market fundamentals and future demand growth would be healthy, despite significant oil price volatility and forecasts of rising shale oil production.

Nasser only briefly referenced the plans for Saudi Aramco to go public, saying it is “proceeding very well,” and adding that the Saudi government, will ultimately decide when and where it will be listed.