Oil producer group OPEC’s Secretary General Haitham al-Ghais said on Thursday (April 27) the International Energy Agency (IEA) should be “very careful” with repeated calls to discourage investment in the oil industry, which was vital for “global economic growth and prosperity in the decades to come, especially in the developing world.”
The influential group of 23 oil-exporting exporting nations and Paris-based IEA have jousted in recent months over their outlooks for global oil supply and demand. Al Ghais said blaming oil for higher inflation was “erroneous and technically incorrect” as there are many other factors causing inflation and that the IEA’s repeated calls to stop investing in oil is what would lead to market volatility.
“The IEA knows very well that there are a confluence of factors that impact markets. The knock-on effects of COVID-19, monetary policies, stock movements, algorithm trading, commodity trading advisors and SPR releases (coordinated or uncoordinated), geopolitics, to name a few,” Al-Ghais said.
With reporting by Reuters, CNBC
