While OPEC often finds itself the usual suspect when it comes to high crude oil and gasoline prices, it is not behind the current inflation trend, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said on Wednesday. “There are other factors beyond OPEC that are really behind the spike we have seen in gas [and] in oil. And again, I think in a nutshell, for me, it is underinvestment — chronic underinvestment,” OPEC’s new Secretary General told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble. The new Secretary General’s denial that the group is responsible for inflation comes alongside OPEC’s need to portray the group as having great influence over the market. But according to Al Ghais, the crude oil price spike goes beyond OPEC—instead, Al Ghais attributed rising prices of crude oil and gasoline to underinvestment, or rather, “chronic underinvestment.” Al Ghais relayed his solution to high oil prices to Gamble: “This is the harsh […]