Netrako and the Limits of Business-as-Usual in Energy Forecasting

Models, Assumptions and the Messiness of Reality

Energy forecasts such as the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook 2025 (AEO) are valuable because they provide a consistent baseline. They anchor discussion around production, demand and emissions pathways. Yet their strength is also their weakness: the models are built on business-as-usual assumptions that smooth out disorder. They rarely account for the irregularities that define real markets—political disruption, financial instability, procurement bottlenecks, or the material limits of technology.

For companies like Netrako, which operate in the practical realm of project execution across North Africa and the Middle East, this gap between model land and lived reality is significant. Pipelines, refineries and power plants across the region are often older than the analysts constructing future scenarios. Procurement cycles are subject to currency restrictions, logistical disruption and institutional fragmentation. Forecasts that project seamless supply and demand curves ignore the day-to-day frictions that determine whether energy actually flows.

Technical Capabilities Versus Aspirational Pathways

Much of the optimism in long-term forecasts rests on the assumption that renewable technologies will scale smoothly. In AEO 2025, solar and wind are expected to triple in the coming decades, offsetting a gradual decline in oil demand. But in regions such as MENA, technical conditions challenge that arc. Grids are fragmented, storage is limited, and industrial baseload requires consistent supply. Intermittent renewables, while growing, cannot displace hydrocarbons at the pace models imply.

From Netrako’s perspective, the reality is defined by technical constraints: how to maintain output from ageing fields, extend the lifespan of facilities built in the 1960s and 1970s, and manufacture replacement components for systems whose original suppliers no longer exist. Here, additive manufacturing and digital design can provide solutions, but these are incremental adjustments, not wholesale transitions. The technical work of keeping energy systems operating rarely matches the sweeping narratives of accelerated decarbonisation.

Procurement and Infrastructure as Determinants of Supply

Another assumption embedded in business-as-usual scenarios is that supply growth can be modelled as a function of geology and price. Yet in practice, procurement and infrastructure condition output as much as reserves do. Algeria may have ample hydrocarbons underground, but currency restrictions slow the import of essential equipment. Libya may hold vast reserves, but political volatility and fractured logistics prevent steady production.

Companies such as Netrako deal with these constraints daily, and their experience underscores how brittle forecasts can be. A model that anticipates steady additions of barrels from North Africa may be mathematically sound, but it collapses when a refinery outage, payment delay, or missing component interrupts flows. The long arc of supply is not a smooth curve; it is punctuated by breakdowns that models often treat as statistical noise.

Planning in an Age of Discontinuity

The conclusion is not that models are useless. They provide a baseline against which reality can be measured. But they should be read as conversation starters rather than roadmaps. For firms engaged in the technical and operational realities of energy, business-as-usual scenarios are insufficient. Planning requires plural scenarios: some shaped by order and growth, others by disorder and constraint.

Netrako’s work in the region demonstrates this pragmatism. By integrating consulting, engineering and procurement, it manages not only technical execution but also systemic risk—anticipating where supply chains might fracture, how ageing infrastructure can be kept viable, and what limits renewables face in grids built for hydrocarbons. In that sense, the company’s perspective echoes the broader lesson of AEO 2025: forecasts can tell us how the future might look under perfect conditions, but the future itself will be shaped by volatility, discontinuity and technical limits.