The geopolitical events of the past year have redrawn the energy agenda across Thailand and Southeast Asia.

Mr. Keith Davies, Technology & Transformation Leader for Energy, Resources & Industrials, Deloitte Southeast Asia, said Thai energy companies are now reframing their investments through the lens of resilience and returns.

“Across the energy transition – whether renewables, carbon capture, or gas infrastructure – organisations are evaluating investments on the basis of how it contributes to energy security and affordability.”

Thailand’s biggest energy groups have already spent a few years reshaping their portfolios to reduce costs and increase their resilience, including consolidating with rival assets to pool production facilities and reduce operational costs, inviting international co-investors, and exiting non-core businesses.

At the same time, a new challenge is meeting Thailand’s rising energy demand. A pipeline of data centre projects, estimated at around 2.87 gigawatts, is placing new pressure on an outdated grid infrastructure that was not designed to absorb it.

AI: From Pilot to the Bottom Line

While AI is creating a spike in power demand, the technology also offers solutions to address energy companies’ concerns around cost and operational efficiencies. AI has become a board-level priority for Thai energy companies – but converting early enthusiasm into measurable bottom-line impact is the real challenge, Mr. Davies said.

Deloitte’s recent Thailand Digital Transformation Survey 2026 found that despite near-universal AI adoption among Thai organisations, only 19% have scaled AI across their operations, with the remaining 81% still in experimentation stages, running pilots in isolated functions. A further 71% report only partially achieving the planned outcomes from their AI implementations.

“Early pilots have shown what is possible, but the challenge is scaling those programs. We are encouraging our clients in the energy and resources sector to ensure they have deployed AI as effectively as possible in existing operations before they look at what the next phase of their strategy should look like – be that investing in additional tech infrastructure or higher risk use cases,” Mr. Davies said.

In Southeast Asia and beyond, AI is already helping organisations in the energy sector improve surveillance and prevent major costs occurring. In one example, Deloitte combined satellite imagery with AI to help a major energy company detect methane leaks along a pipeline in real time – identifying an emissions source that traditional monitoring had missed, and avoiding both the regulatory exposure and the remediation cost that would have followed.

Another client used predictive maintenance on its utility boilers, identifying a mechanical failure risk before it became a running-to-failure event. This avoided unplanned downtime and disproportionate repair costs.

Mr. Mongkol Somphol, Energy, Resources & Industrials Industry Leader, Deloitte Thailand, said energy companies are increasingly looking for AI, automation and advanced analytics for data tracking, asset optimisation and operational resilience.

“What our clients in the energy sector are asking for is AI that has a direct and measurable impact on how they run their assets and manage their costs, not technology for its own sake. The pressure they face is real: they cannot control commodity prices, but they can control how efficiently they operate. AI is increasingly central to that, from predictive maintenance and emissions monitoring to supply chain optimisation. The next step is moving from isolated applications to agentic AI that is embedded across operations, making decisions in real time. That is where the competitive advantage will be built, and it is one area where we are helping clients focus their investment.”

The Execution Gap

Optimising AI is the best way for Thailand energy companies to reduce costs in a transformation way given the companies cannot control the price of crude, petrochemicals, or power – which means operating cost reduction remains the primary lever for protecting margins.

Oil price shocks, which once occurred roughly once a decade, are now occurring with far greater frequency, compressing the window for deliberate, well-sequenced planning. At the same time, pressure from international investors and trading partners on carbon disclosure and emissions performance is adding urgency to decarbonisation timelines.

Industry observers say the sector has made significant strategic moves in recent years with portfolios reshaped and consolidations underway. The question now is whether companies can build the digital capability and organisational capacity to deliver returns from those decisions at scale.

“Thailand’s energy sector has made the right calls strategically. What is less certain is the pace of execution. The companies that will lead through the next cycle are those that treat AI not as a technology project but as an operational capability – embedded in how assets are run, how costs are managed, and how decisions reach the boardroom. That requires a different kind of investment: in data foundations, in talent, and in the operating model changes to sustain it,” said Mr. Ariya Phukfon, Technology & Transformation Leader, Deloitte Thailand.