ABU DHABI: OPEC is optimistic on demand and sees under-investment as a risk to energy security, Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said on Monday at an energy industry event in Abu Dhabi.

He stressed the importance of continued investment in the oil and gas industry and said he sees calls to stop investing in oil as counterproductive.

"We still see oil demand as quite resilient this year, as it was last year," Al Ghais said, noting the group's forecast was for year-on-year demand growth of more than 2.3 million barrels per day.

He added that investment in the oil and gas sector was important for energy security.

"We are...running quite low on spare capacity, we have said this repeatedly and this requires a concerted effort by all of the stakeholders to see the importance of investing in this industry," he said. (Reporting by Maha El Dahan, Yousef Saba and Alexander Cornwell; Writing by Nadine Awadalla; Editing by Louise Heavens, Kirsten Donovan)