VIENNA, July 9. /TASS/. The spare oil production capacity in the global oil sector is declining every year, even in OPEC+ countries, due to underinvestment, Energy Minister of the UAE Suhail Al Mazrouei said at the 9th OPEC International Seminar.
"More companies are now in the environment where they can't produce what they produced last year or even sometimes last month," the minister said. The production capacity requires huge investments to simply maintain production. This is true for OPEC+ countries also, Al Mazrouei said.
"What this group of 22 countries [OPEC+] is trying to do, by sometimes sacrificing and doing voluntary cuts, [is] to sustain a price that is reasonable for the investors to invest," he noted.
The oil industry have the common view that it is in the underinvestment environment, the minister stressed. "The longer this period is, the more painful it's going to be for the years to come," he said. "We need to incentivize the industry to come and invest in oil and gas," Al Mazrouei added.
The 9th OPEC International Seminar is being held on July 9-10 in Vienna. TASS is the official media partner of the event.