Africa-Press – Botswana. The oil industry needs to increase investment in capacity and new production so that the oil market can avoid high volatility in the future, said OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais.
Al Ghais highlighted the importance of increasing investments in the oil sector in an exclusive interview with Emirates News Agency (WAM) on the sidelines of the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi.
The significant decline in investment in the oil industry, which began with the 2015 price drop and then again in 2020 with the first wave of Covid-19, is exacerbating volatility in the oil market, the OPEC secretary-general said. .
Prior to 2016, investments in the oil industry reached $500 billion a year, but have fallen since then, leading to lower production capacity, Al Ghais told WAM.
Idle capacity globally is currently very low and in the hands of two of the main OPEC producers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Al Ghais, reiterated recent comments from Saudi Arabia and other major producers who said the current energy crisis has been brewing for years with little investment in oil and gas.
This week at the ADIPEC conference, OPEC released the 2022 edition of the World Oil Outlook, which says that “all forms of energy will be needed to meet future energy needs”, and that oil is expected to retain the largest share of the matrix by 2045, representing almost 29 percent of the share at the time.
OPEC’s outlook also showed that the global oil sector will need cumulative investments of US$12.1 trillion in upstream, midstream and downstream by 2045, which equates to more than US$500 trillion a year.
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