The oil industry needs to increase investment in capacity and new production so that the oil market can avoid high volatility in the future, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said.

Al Ghais noted the importance of increasing investment in the oil sector in an exclusive interview with WAM news agency on the sidelines of the ADIPEC energy conference in Abu Dhabi.

The OPEC secretary general said that the significant decline in investment in the oil industry, which began with the collapse of prices in 2015 and then again in 2020 with the first wave of COVID, exacerbates the volatility in the oil market.

Investment in the oil industry exceeded $500 billion a year until 2016, he said, but has since declined, leading to a decline in production capacity.

Free capacity in the world is now very small and in the hands of OPEC's two main producers, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Al Ghais echoed recent comments by Saudi Arabia and other major producers, who said that the current energy crisis has been brewing for years because of underinvestment in oil and gas.

Years of underinvestment in oil and gas production is the main cause of the current energy crisis, and when the global economy recovers from the current slowdown, the small spare oil production capacity that remains will be wiped out, Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said in September. He noted that investment in oil and gas more than halved between 2014 and 2021, adding that the increase this year is too little, too late, too short-term.

These are the real reasons for this state of energy instability: underinvestment in oil and gas; there is no back-up plan," Saudi Aramco's CEO said back in September.

At this week's ADIPEC conference, OPEC unveiled its 2022 World Oil Forecast, which says that all forms of energy will be needed to meet future energy needs and that oil is expected to maintain the largest share of the energy mix through 2045.

OPEC's forecast also showed that the global oil sector will require a cumulative investment of $12.1 trillion in exploration, refining and refining until 2045, which is more than $500 billion a year.