OPEC secretary general says oil demand to remain robust, no change to estimates

Clayton Seigle, senior fellow at CSIS, joins BNN Bloomberg to discuss the oil amid rising prices as Iran ponders U.S. deal to halt war.

ST PETERSBURG -- OPEC expects robust oil demand growth and is not changing its estimates, Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said on Thursday at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, despite the Middle East conflict and closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Despite all the commentary out there that oil demand is declining, we have not registered signs of that yet,” Al Ghais said.

“We still see robust demand growth at 1.2 million barrels a day for this year,” he said.

He also said that investments in the oil industry should not be affected by “one-off events” that happen anywhere in the world.

“We need to invest well ahead of time to be prepared for the demand that we see in the future,” he said.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Olesya Astakhova; Writing by Felix Light and Ksenia Orlova; Editing by Barbara Lewis and Kirsten Donovan)