The Middle East and North Africa (Mena) will pump tens of billions of US dollars into the region's oil and gas sector in the next five years to help secure future energy needs, analysts told the first Global Energy Forum Middle East and Africa.

Organised by Microsoft to discuss how information technology solutions can empower the global energy industry, the forum revealed Abu Dhabi alone is investing almost $25 billion (Dh91bn) in the next five years.

Omar Saleh, Mena oil and gas sales manager at Microsoft, spoke at the forum and told the audience Abu Dhabi's investment will mainly cover maintenance, upgrade and protection of the emirate's energy assets.

"Investments in the energy sector in the region are massive. Abu Dhabi, for example, will invest $24.8bn towards the maintenance and upgrade of its current [oil and gas] production capacity," Saleh told Emirates Business. The Microsoft official said Abu Dhabi's investment signals a major effort in securing the future energy needs of the region.

"We are also hearing of similar efforts in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It is not just about expansion of production, but refining and different aspects of energy that people are looking for securing in the future," he said.

He said the Mena region, which sits on two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves, pays a lot of attention on how technology can empower this very important sector "in terms of not just production optimisation or, otherwise, production sustainability and efficiency, but also in terms of how we are consuming this energy, how we are responding to our environmental responsibilities and how we are empowering reaching new levels of energy and security".

And refining is where most of the investment is being focused. Capital is being pumped into refining, he said, because there is currently a lack of capacity. Refineries alone constitute 50 per cent of costs involved in the energy sector projects.

"We are short on our refining capacity. However, there is lot of investment. For example, Saudi Arabia is upgrading its different refinery facilities. Similarly Kuwait has massive refinery plans and here in the UAE there are a couple of refinery plans in the pipeline in Fujairah."

Regarding capital spent on IT solutions for the industry, he said investment in the area is limitless and defies estimates. There are massive, capital-intensive IT investments in the sector across the world, he said.

"We are seeing a big move towards centralisation in the industry and that is definitely sparked by the need to make sure IT is no longer just a support agent, but rather an empowering agent."