1 Khalid Al-Falih
President and CEO
Saudi Aramco
Al-Falih, who has held the top spot at Aramco since 1 January 2009, sits at the head of the largest oil company by value in the world. With a workforce of around 60,000, crude oil reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil and revenues of between $2 and $7 trillion in 2010, the superlatives just keep on coming for Saudi Aramco. It is also widely believed to be the most profitable company in the world.
Earlier this year, Al-Falih announced Aramco’s plans to invest $35 billion into restructuring the company.
Falih is keen for Aramco to capture more of the value chain from the oil it produces, and eventually become an integrated petrochemicals and refining hub for key Asian markets as the industry trends shift over the next few decades.
The company has also been changing its priorities in response to the advent of unconventional exploration, halting further investment in adding production capacity. Aramco is also looking to expand internationally.
The banner project of this Accelerated Transformation Programme, under which Aramco hopes to become the world’s largest integrated energy company, is a massive $20 billion joint venture with Dow Chemical, with the Yanbu export refinery expansion and $7 billion Jizan refinery also sparking huge tendering activity.
Al-Falih also sits on the Saudi Arabia Supreme Council of Petroleum and Mineral Affairs.
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2 Hussain Al-Sharistani
Deputy Prime Minister
Iraq Federal Government
Iraq’s rise to become one of the most dominant players in the regional energy sector over the coming decades is a widely anticipated trend within the industry. There are still some major challenges ahead for Al-Sharistani, such as the development of a fully functioning energy infrastructure.
But a recent IEA special report projected that Iraq could contribute as much as 5.6 mbpd to the global oil supply by 2035 and it stands to gain $5 trillion in revenue from oil exports over the period to 2035.
The softly-spoken State of Law party member and ex nuclear scientist Hussain al-Sharistani is responsible for the fastest growing – and potentially largest – hydrocarbons industry on earth, one that once developed may supplant Saudi Arabia as the world’s swing producer of oil.
Sharistani drafted the first incarnation of Iraq’s infamous oil laws. As these stymied amid opposition from Kurdish politicians, he forged Baghdad’s obdurate attitude to Kurdistan’s production sharing contracts, one that survives to this day and has exacerbated the division between the Kurdish region and the rest of Iraq.
Observers and industry experts all point out that the constitutional dispute between Baghdad and Erbil over the PSCs has been a deterrent for oil companies looking to operate in Kurdistan but are afraid that such agreements with the regional government could be void in the future.
However, amid the mire of Iraqi politics, Sharistani – who suffered years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Ba’athist regime – is widely reported to be incorruptible. This virtue will be useful in Sharistani’s interim tenure at the Department for Electricity, where contracting debacles and a pitiful lack of progress prompted the sacking of Raad Shalal.
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3 Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi
Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources
kingdom of Saudi ArabiA
A few words from Al-Naimi can move global oil markets. The Saudi Oil minister commands the largest volume of spare oil producing capacity in the world. It’s become trite to say that, whoever chairs OPEC, it’s Saudi – via Al-Naimi – that calls the shots.
Al-Naimi holds years of experience in the industry, having worked his way up the ranks in Saudi Aramco from errand boy to CEO. There he improved the company’s efficiency and maintained the national oil company’s exclusive rights to the country’s upstream sector, even when low prices and the need to invest heavily in new Saudi engineering talent made the approaches of supermajors tempting.
Earlier this year, Al-Naimi announced plans to transform Saudi Arabia into downstream exporter. “Currently, we control 8% of the global petrochemical market,” he said at Saudi Downstream Forum in March 2012.
“By 2015, our market share will be 15%, allowing the Kingdom to be the third largest petrochemical exporter in the world,” he said earlier last year.
Currently, Saudi Arabia exports crude and raw products only to have it refined and re-imported into the Kingdom as finished products, but the proposed industry shift will allow the country to become more independent while providing jobs for its booming population.
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4 Abdullah Nasser al-Suwaidi
DIRECTOR GENERAL
ADNOC
Abdullah Nasser al-Suwaid’s appointment as director general of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nayan, President of the United Arab Emirates, came at a crucial time for the company.
ADNOC is currently looking to renegotiate long-running key contracts with supermajors operating its major oil fields.
ExxonMobil, Shell, Total and others are seeking to extend oil production contracts in Abu Dhabi.
The Emirate is planning to spend as much as $60 billion over the next decade to expand its oil and gas industry, including boosting crude production capacity to 3.5 million barrels a day from about 2.8 million now.
Exxon Mobil and Shell are concession-holders in ADNOC’s onshore unit Abu Dhabi Co. for Onshore Oil Operations until 2014. Adnoc owns 60% of the unit with Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, BP and Partex holding the rest.
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5 Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada
Chairman and Managing Director
Qatar Petroleum
HE Dr. Mohammed bin Saleh Al-Sada has been appointed as the Minister of Energy & Industry, State of Qatar. He is also the Managing Director of Qatar Petroleum and Chairman of Tasweeq.
Al-Sada was the Managing Director of RasGas Company Limited (RasGas) and the subsidiary companies it operates. Al-Sada, who was educated in Manchester, England, has earlier held the position of Director of Technical at Qatar Petroleum where he directed major oil & gas and related infrastructure projects.
He brings with him a wealth of experience with over 25 years of service with Qatar Petroleum successfully managing various important corporate departments.
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6 Sami Al Rushaid
Chairman and Managing Director
Kuwait Oil Company
This year, the KOC was actively awarding contracts to a number of companies including a $200 million EPC contract to Petrofac to bolster Kuwait’s North onshore oil infrastructure by improving power supply.
In September the Kuwait Oil Company, announced that it would continue producing at 3million bpd, with demand for Kuwait’s oil remaining high. According to Rushaid, the country’s north fields, which primarily produce heavy crude, are pumping 700,000 barrels a day, which should rise to 1 million bpd by 2017.
Kuwait is progressing with an ambitious upstream programme in the north and west of the country, and is widely tipped to be a hot exploration and production market next year.
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7 Ashti Hawrami
Natural Resource Minister
Kurdistan Regional Government
The Kurdistan region is currently one of the most heavily explored areas in the world. Resolution of current conflicts between the KRGF and the federal government would allow the region to produce between 500,000 to 800,000 bpd in 2020 and between 750,000 to 1.2 million bpd by 2035, marking a considerable shift in Iraq’s output.
Last year, Ashti Hawrami declared that ExxonMobil had signed production sharing contracts (PSCs) for six exploration blocks in the country.
The move was the culmination of years of astute political positioning in relation to Baghdad in order to secure investment and political and commercial safety for the nascent Kurdish oil industry. But things have changed over the year, companies that have signed PSCs in the north are now barred from activity in the south.
Exxon itself has been looking to divest its southern stakes as it continues to invest in the Kurdistan region.
Hawrami’s department presides over the Kurdish region’s estimated 45 billion barrels of oil, which has only just begun to be tapped by a number of independent companies.
His next challenge will be to maintain the government’s central position as investment drives the region’s next era of consolidation and the really big players come to town.
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8 Mohammed bin Hamad Al Rumhy
Minister of Oil and Gas
Sultanate of Oman
Through Al Rumhy’s leadership, Oman has managed to reverse field decline and is now producing 17% more oil than it was in 2007. The Minister has strategically managed to develop the national oil industry despite a 27% drop in production between 2001 and 2009.
Under his leadership, Oman’s oil and gas company, Oman LNG, has turned the industry into a central part of the Sultanate’s revenue stream. The country currently has 5.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and 30 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas, with Korea Gas Corporation dominating LNG output, producing 4.1 million tonnes per year.
Through Oman LNG, the sultanate has an outlet for around 1.5 to 2 million tones of additional LNG exports per year, allowing new resources to be quickly monetized.
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9 Abdul Kareem Al-Luaibi
Minister of Energy & Mines
Iraq Federal Government
Appointed to the job in 2010, Al-Luaibi has worked with the Ministry of Oil since 1998 where he moved from Chief Engineer of the Technical Department to Director of Chemical Materials to Assistant Director General, Inspector General and then the deputy Minister position before being appointed to his current role in December 2010.
Needless to say, the decisions made by Iraq’s Federal government over the validity of contracts signed in Iraq, the use of revenues from the country’s booming oil industry and the future of Iraq’s energy output will have dramatic implications for the region as well as the rest of the world.
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10 Ali Rashid Al-Jarwan
CEO
ADMA-OPCO
Ali Rashid Al-Jarwan is central to Abu Dhabi’s ambitious field development plans.
The CEO of ADMA-OPCO, 60% owned by ADNOC, is planning to increase production capacity at Abu Dhabi’s offshore fields by 14.2% to 700,000 barrels per day by the end of 2014.
The Lower Zakum field is slated by Jawan to add 100,000 bpd to its current production capacity of 325,000 bpd by the end of 2012 through the use of water injection.
Adma-Opco is also developing two offshore oil fields — Umm Al Lulu and Nasr.
