OPEC and the Global Energy Order: From its Origins to the Present Time

Ugo Nwokeji is Associate Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California Berkeley. His work deals with the cultural history and political economy of Africa since 1500, with particular focus on international commerce in the Bight of Biafra. His publications include The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the Development of the Oil and Gas Industry (Baker Institute for Public Policy, 2007) and The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra (CUP, 2010). The latter won the 2011 Herskovits Book Prize.

Fadi Aboualfa is the Managing Director of the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) since 2012. After finishing his studies in the California, Fadi continued to work in Risk Management for CCC, which has successfully built one-third of the oil and gas pipelines in the Middle East. He later moved to MEES where he re-launched the publication and was responsible for structuring the editorial content as it stands today. To commemorate OPEC’s 55th Anniversary, Fadi launched what is considered the largest public resource on OPEC History with content dating back to the very first meeting when MEES was the only foreign press agency in Baghdad.

Nelida Fuccaro teaches the Modern History of the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of oil, urban history, violence and frontier societies.

She is the author of The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq (London: IB Tauris, 1999), Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2009, paperback 2011), the guest editor of the thematic contribution ‘Histories of Oil and Urban Modernity in the Middle East’ in Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2013), and the editor of Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2016).

Touraj Atabaki is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History and Emeritus Professor of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at Leiden University. He studied first theoretical physics and then history.

Touraj Atabaki has written extensively on Iranian history. His latest publications include: Oil and Beyond Expanding British Imperial Aspirations, Emerging Oil Capitalism, and the Challenge of Social Questions in the First World War, co-author Kaveh Ehsani, in Helmut Bley and Anorthe Kremers (eds), The World During the First World War (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 2014); “Far from Home, But at Home: Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry,” Studies in History, 31(1), 2015; Editing the issue of “Writing the Social History of Labor in the Iranian Oil Industry”, for the International Labor and Working-Class History, 84 (Fall), 2013. And: “From ‘Amaleh (Labor) to Kargar (Worker): Recruitment, Work Discipline and Making of the Working Class in the Persian/Iranian Oil Industry”, International Labor and Working-Class History, 84 (Fall), 2013.

Touraj Atabaki has been the coordinator of a research project on the hundred years social history of labour in the Iranian oil industry, funded by the Netherlands for Scientific Research.

John Heilbrunn is Associate Professor of International Studies at the Colorado School of Mines. He is also a research fellow (chercheur associé) at the Laboratory, Les Afriques dans le Monde (LAM), SciencesPo-Bordeaux. His research is on oil exporting countries in Africa, the middle classes in emerging economies, and the political economy of development.

Professor Heilbrunn has written numerous articles and papers on strategies to fight corruption; the new middle classes in emerging markets, and the political economy of the extractive industries in African development. He is the author of Oil, Democracy, and Development in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). In addition to his research, Professor Heilbrunn has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the United States government, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the British Department for International Development (DfID), the Agence français de développement (AFD), and governments in Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Is Honorary President of the Institute for African Studies of the RAS. He Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).

He was posted as a daily correspondent for the Pravda newspaper in Vietnam, Turkey, Egypt and other countries. Later became Deputy Director of the RAS Institute of Africa.

Between 1992 and 2015 he was Director of the Institute for African Studies of the RAS and Director of the RAS Institute of Africa. From 2006 to 2011, was Special Representative of the Russian President for Relations with Leaders of African Countries.

He has as been: Member of the international security section of the Russian Federation (RF) Security Council; Member of the Foreign Policy Council of the RF MFA; Editor-in-Chief of the Asia and Africa Today journal.

He is author of 35 books and over 900 publications in academic journals related to the social and political history and current affairs of nations in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Publications in English include: The History of Saudi Arabia (Saqi Books, 2000), King Faisal of Saudi Arabia (Saqi Books, 2000).

Dr. Majid Al-Moneef is the Secretary General and a member of the Supreme Economic Council of Saudi Arabia and served from 2003-2013 as Saudi Arabia’s Governor to OPEC and from 1992-2003 as its representative to the organization’s Economic Commission Board. He was a member of the Economic and Energy Committee of the Majlis Ash Shura (Consultative Assembly), the Chairman of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Energy Team, president of the Saudi Economic Association, vice dean and professor of economics at King Saud University, and advisor to the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.

Dr. Al-Moneef is a member of Saudi Aramco’s Board of Directors, the International Advisory Group of King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), the Oxford Energy Policy Club. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Cairo based Economic Research Forum, the editorial Board of the Saudi Economic Journal and the advisory Board of OPEC Energy Review.

Omar AlShehabi is the Director of the Gulf Centre for Development Policies and Assistant Professor in Economics at the Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) in Kuwait.

He completed his DPhil in Economics at Pembroke College Oxford, where his thesis focused on neo-classical modelling of macroeconomic labour dynamics. He has previously worked at the IMF, the World Bank and McKinsey. His research focuses on the political economy and modern history of the Gulf Arab States. His latest work in English is a co-edited volume with Abduladi Khalaf and Adam Hanieh entitled Transit States: Labour, Migration and Citizenship in the Gulf.

  Juan Carlos Boué was born in Mexico City and was educated at El Colegio de México. Upon graduating from university in 1990, he started working at the international trading arm of Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), the Mexican national state oil company. Ever since, his professional activities have been focused primarily on the political economy, industrial economics and international governance structure of petroleum, alternating between academia, and the oil industry proper.

From 2005 to 2009, he was special advisor to the Venezuelan Minister of Energy and Petroleum, the president of the Venezuelan state oil company (Petróleos de Venezuela, PDVSA) and the Venezuelan Vice-Minister for Hydrocarbons. In 2010, Boué returned to the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies as a research associate.

Boué has written widely on the industrial economics of the oil and gas exploration and production, and petroleum refining industries, as well as on auction design for oil and gas bidding rounds and the taxation and political economy of oil in general. Among his recent monographs: La internacionalización de PDVSA. Una costosa ilusión. Caracas, Ediciones del Ministerio de Energía y Minas de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela (Fondo Editorial Darío Ramírez), 2004. (The Internationalisation of PDVSA. A Costly Illusion).

Einar Lie is a professor of Economic History at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation, and History. He served as a Vise Dean at the Faculty of Humanities from 2010 to 2014 (on sabbatical Fall 2013), and Board Chairman of The Norwegian University Center in St. Petersburg and of the interfaculty research area Kultrans.

Lie (b. 1965) holds a Master degree in Economics and a PhD in Economic History (1996). He has published widely on economic planning and policy making in the Nordic countries. Over the last two decades, Lie has been engaged in a number of business history projects, as a researcher and academic advisor.

Main research interests have been the development of state-business relations especially in banking, manufacturing industry and the oil sector. Currently, he is commissioned on a part time basis as a project manager for the history of the Central Bank of Norway 1816-2016. Lie is also a regular op-ed columnist in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten.

Hans Otto Frøland (dr philos 1993) is professor of European contemporary history at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NUST), Trondheim. Having constantly worked from the perspective of political economy, he has published on the history of corporatism, the history of European integration, the history of the aluminum industry, and the history of World War II.

His current research focus on concerted European efforts to handle its raw materials import predicament dependence from the perspective of political risk. This research is part of a wider research project based at NUST, The Fate of Nations: Natural Resources and Historical Development, for which he serves as leader.

Mats Ingulstad holds a permanent research position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Oslo. He wrote his PhD at the European University Institute on strategic raw materials and US foreign policy, and is currently leading a research project on the EU and natural resources. Other ongoing research includes the transnational history of wartime labor and Norwegian research policy in the oil and industry sectors.

Dr. Henning Türk is a specialist in 20th century international history at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany. He is currently working on a project funded by the German Research Foundation about “The International Organization of National Energy Policy: Great Britain and Western Germany in the International Energy Agency (IEA), 1974–1993.”

Federico Romero is professor of History of Post-War European Cooperation and Integration at the European University Institute. A specialist on 20th Century international and transnational history he has recently co-edited, with E. Bini and G. Garavini, Oil Shock. The 1973 Crisis and Its Economic Legacy (London, 2016) and with E. Mourlon-Druol, International Summitry and Global Governance: The Rise of the G-7 and the European Council (London 2014).

Dr. Helder Queiroz Pinto Junior is an economist and has a PhD in Energy Economics at Université de Grenoble, France (1989-1993). Since 1994, he has been a Professor and a Research Economist with the Energy Economics Group, Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (January-October 2001) and Visiting Professor at Université de Paris Dauphine (October 2015). Between June 2011 and June 2015, he served as Director of ANP (National Agency of Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels). 

Duccio Basosi teaches History of International Relations at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice. He has coordinated the FIRB 2010 research program "The Engines of Growth: For a Global History of the Conflict between Renewable, Fossil and Fissile Energies, 1972-1992", authored the monograph Finanza e petrolio. Gli Stati Uniti, l'oro nero e l'economia politica internazionale (Venice, 2012) and co-edited (with Giuliano Garavini and Massimiliano Trentin) the volume Counter-shock. The Oil Counter-Revolution of the 1980s (London, 2017).

He now coordinates the Venice unit of the PRIN 2015 research program "The Making of the Washington Consensus: Credits, Debts and Power, 1979-1991."

Maohong Bao is professor of environmental history and Asia-Pacific studies, History Department and Center for World Environmental History, Peking University. His main publications include: Forest and Development: Deforestation in the Philippines (in Chinese, 2008), China’s Environmental Governance and Environmental Cooperation in East Asia (in Japanese, 2009), The Origins of Environmental History and Its Development (in Chinese, 2012).

He is now working on thematic studies about economic development and environmental governance in Post WW II.

Stefan Tetzlaff is an economic and social historian of modern South Asia and its connection with the world. He has worked so far on exchanges between South Asia and the Gulf since the late 19th century and on the politics of road transport in early 20th century India.

Stefan studied history, political science, and comparative literature in Berlin and New Delhi and completed a PhD in Mediaeval and Modern History at the University of Göttingen. Postdoctoral fellowships from the Centre for South Asian Studies in Paris and the German Historical Institute in London have enabled him to commence work on the transnational history of automotive manufacture between India and Europe during the early cold war period.

Dr. Anna Viden joined the Middle East Center (University of Pennsylvania) as Program Coordinator in January 2017. She has held positions as Lecturer at the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania and as Assistant Professor in International Studies at Charles University in Prague. Dr. Viden received her PhD in history at Sciences Po, Paris. Her research deals with US foreign policy in the Middle East with a specific focus on US-Saudi relations.

Victor McFarland is an assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri. He received his doctorate in history from Yale University and has served as a Miller Center Fellow at the University of Virginia and a Dickey Center Fellow at Dartmouth College. Dr. McFarland studies the history of the energy industry, US–Middle East relations, and the United States in the late 20th century. His current book project focuses on the oil crisis of the 1970s.

Yves Bouvier is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the Paris-Sorbonne University, and a member of the research unit Sirice (UMR 8138) since September 2013. He is holder of an agrégation in history and a PhD from the Paris-Sorbonne University dealing with the relationship between big business and the State in France in the XXth Century.

Yves works on the history of energy and on the role of the European Commission in the field of the renewable energy sources. Last book: Yves Bouvier, Léonard Laborie (ed.), L'Europe en transitions. Energie, mobilité, communications, XVIIIe-XXIe siècles, Paris, Nouveau monde éditions, 2016.

Victor McFarland is an assistant professor of history at the University of Missouri. He received his doctorate in history from Yale University and has served as a Miller Center Fellow at the University of Virginia and a Dickey Center Fellow at Dartmouth College. Dr. McFarland studies the history of the energy industry, US–Middle East relations, and the United States in the late 20th century. His current book project focuses on the oil crisis of the 1970s.

Claudia Piña Navarro (Juarez, Mexico, 1985). Currently a PhD graduate student in History at El Colegio de México, her dissertation focuses on Mexico’s oil diplomacy between 1970-1982. She has worked as a Public Relations consultant in proyects for Petróleos Mexicanos Gas y Petroquímica Básica (2013), and as a crew member of United Nations Humanitarian Air Service in the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (2011-2012).

Dr. Carole Nakhle is the Director and founder of Crystol Energy (UK). An Energy Economist, she specialises in international petroleum contractual arrangements and fiscal regimes; upstream oil and gas regulations; petroleum revenue management and governance; energy policy, security and investment; and global oil and gas market developments.

With expertise spanning the private sector, government and academia, Dr. Nakhle has worked with oil and gas companies (NOCs and IOCs), governments and policy makers, international organisations, academic institutions, and specialized think tanks.

 Paul Appleby leads the analysis of long term energy market developments for BP. His career at BP spans 32 years, and includes a variety of roles in BP’s gas and alternative energy businesses.

He received his theoretical training in economics at Cambridge University (MA and MPhil); and served a practical apprenticeship as a Fellow of the Overseas Development Institute, posted to Malawi. He is an associate lecturer in energy economics at the University of Surrey, and Chair of the British Institute of Energy Economics.

Francesco Petrini, is Senior Lecturer in History of International Relations at the University of Padova. Among his latest publications: Oil: Too Important to be Left to the Oilmen? Britain and the First Oil Crisis, 1970-3, in J. Fisher, R. Smith, E. Pedaliu (eds), The Foreign Office, Commerce and British Foreign Policy in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave, 2017; Imperi del profitto. Multinazionali petrolifere e governi nel XX secolo (Empires of profit. Oil Multinationals and Governments in the XXth Century), FrancoAngeli, 2015.

Jonathan Kuiken is an Assistant Professor of History at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA. His research examines the nature of the public-private partnership between the British Government and its two domestically-based oil companies, British Petroleum, and Shell in the post-World War II period.

His manuscript, entitled Empires of Energy: Britain, British Petroleum, Shell and the remaking of the international oil industry, 1956-1983 is currently under review. He received his PhD from Boston College in 2013.

Elisabetta Bini is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Naples Federico II. Her publications include: Working for Oil: Comparative Social Histories of Labor in Petroleum (ed. with Touraj Atabaki and Kaveh Ehsani) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming); "A Challenge to Cold War Oil Politics? ENI’s Relations with the Soviet Union, 1958-1969”, in Jeronim Perovic, ed., Cold War Energy: A Transnational History of Soviet Oil and Gas (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); Oil Shock: the 1973 Crisis and its Economic Legacy (ed. with Giuliano Garavini and Federico Romero) (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016) La potente benzina italiana. Guerra fredda e consumi di massa tra Italia, Stati Uniti e Terzo mondo (1945-1973) (Rome: Carocci, 2013).

Marta Musso is a Max Weber Fellow in the Department of History and Civilisation at the European University Institute. She holds a PhD in international economic history at the University of Cambridge, with a thesis titled “Towards a European energy network: the oil industry in the Aftermath of the Algerian War.” She writes about energy policies, business history, European international relations.

Biography will be posted when available.

Dag Harald Claes is professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. He is also adjunct professor at Molde University College. He holds a doctoral degree in Political Science from the University of Oslo.

He specializes in international energy relations, in particular studies of oil-producer cooperation, the energy relations between Norway and the EU, the role of oil in Middle East conflicts, and Arctic oil and gas. At present he is Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo.

His publications include: The Politics of Oil-Producer Cooperation. Westview Press 2001. Governing the Global Economy - Politics, Institutions and Economic Development. Routledge 2011 (edited with Carl Henrik Knutsen. “Arctic Petroleum Resources in a Regional and Global Perspective,” in Rolf Tamnes & Kristine Offerdal (ed.), Geopolitics and Security in the Arctic. Regional Dynamics in a Global World. Routledge 2014, with Arild Moe. “Cooperation and Conflict in Oil and Gas Markets,”  in Andreas Glodthau (ed.), The Handbook of Global Energy Policy. Wiley-Blackwell 2014. “The interdependence of European–Russian energy relations” in Energy Policy (59)2013, with Øistein Harsem.

Ustina Markus is Professor at the United International College, Zhuhai, China. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and was formerly Chair of Political Science at the University of Kurdistan-Hawler, Iraq, and an Associate Professor at the Kazakh Institute for Management, Economics and Strategic Research (KIMEP) in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

She is the author of Oil and Gas: The Business and Politics of Energy, (Palgrave 2014), and “International Oil and Gas Pricing Regimes,” in eds. Van de Graaf, Thijs, et. al., The Palgrave Handbook of the International Political Economy of Energy, (Palgrave MacMillan 2016). 

Peter Rutland is the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought at Wesleyan University in Middletown CT. He has a BA from Oxford and a PhD from the University of York. He has been a visiting professor in St. Petersburg, Manchester and Tokyo.

He is associate editor of Russian Review and editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers. View his research

Viacheslav Nekrasov is Assistant Professor and Senior Researcher at Surgut State Pedagogical University, Russia.

He recently published: Oil and gas complex of USSR (the second of 1950s – the first part of 1960s): economic and institutional issues of development," Khanty-Mansiisk, 2012. (in Russian); and Decision-Making in the Soviet Energy Sector in post-Stalinist Times: The Failure of Khrushchev’s Economic Modernization Strategy // Cold War Energy. A Transnational History of Soviet Oil and Gas, in P. Jeronim (Ed.). L., 2017. 

His current research project concerns the “Socialist World System” and the Global Economy in the mid 1950s - mid 1970s: the Evolution of Theories and Practices of Soviet Economic and Technological Leadership. Collaboration with Institute of World History, Russia.

Dag Harald Claes is professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. He is also adjunct professor at Molde University College. He holds a doctoral degree in Political Science from the University of Oslo.

He specializes in international energy relations, in particular studies of oil-producer cooperation, the energy relations between Norway and the EU, the role of oil in Middle East conflicts, and Arctic oil and gas. At present he is Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo.

His publications include: The Politics of Oil-Producer Cooperation. Westview Press 2001. Governing the Global Economy - Politics, Institutions and Economic Development. Routledge 2011 (edited with Carl Henrik Knutsen. “Arctic Petroleum Resources in a Regional and Global Perspective,” in Rolf Tamnes & Kristine Offerdal (ed.), Geopolitics and Security in the Arctic. Regional Dynamics in a Global World. Routledge 2014, with Arild Moe. “Cooperation and Conflict in Oil and Gas Markets,”  in Andreas Glodthau (ed.), The Handbook of Global Energy Policy. Wiley-Blackwell 2014. “The interdependence of European–Russian energy relations” in Energy Policy (59)2013, with Øistein Harsem.

Ellen R. Wald specializes in the geopolitics of energy, with work in the global energy trade, domestic US energy policy and the Middle East. She is currently a consultant and advisor to investment, risk management and public relations firms, and she teaches history and policy at Jacksonville University. Dr. Wald writes two weekly columns on the business and geopolitics of energy (for Forbes online and for Investing.com) and appears regularly in a variety of news media outlets. She earned an AB at Princeton University in history and Near Eastern Studies and a PhD in history at Boston University. She is completing a book on the history of Saudi Arabia and Aramco to appear in 2018. 

Jeff Colgan is Richard Holbrooke Associate Professor of Political Science at the Watson Institute of International Studies of Brown University. He completed his PhD in politics and public policy at Princeton University, a Master’s at the University of California-Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s in nuclear engineering at McMaster University. His most recent book is Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Dr. Ramzi Salman, a graduate of Birmingham University, started his professional life in 1962 teaching at Baghdad University then moved to the Iraq National Oil Company as head of petroleum engineering. In 1972, established SOMO, and remained its Coe until moving to Vienna in 1991 as OPEC's Deputy Secretary General. In 1997 took up the post of senior advisor to Qatar's Minister of Energy, retiring in 2013.

Sophia is Global Distinguished Professor, Environmental Studies and Public Policy at NYU and NYUAD. She holds a BA from Yale University; an MA from Columbia University, and a PhD from the UOP in Greece.

Sophia Kalantzakos spent ten years as a policy maker, an elected Member of Parliament and Member of the Greek Government until the end of 2009. In 2010, she entered Academia as Global Distinguished Professor in Environmental Studies and Public Policy at NYU. Her interdisciplinary research has drawn upon international affairs (her area of study) and climate change as the threat that is reshaping power politics across the globe. Her research focuses on resource competition, the challenges of a new energy mix, and the potential of an EU-China partnership for the Anthropocene.

This year, she is focusing her attention on EU-GCC relations. She most recently co-edited a book entitled Energy and Environmental Transformations in a Globalizing World: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue.

Professor Paul Stevens is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. He was educated as an economist and as a specialist on the Middle East at Cambridge and SOAS. He is also professor emeritus at the University of Dundee and a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics (Japan). Until recently he was also a visiting professor at University College London (Australia). In March 2009, he was presented with the OPEC Award for outstanding work on oil economics.

Author of Or Noir, la grande histoire du pétrole, La Découverte, Paris, 2015, winner of the 2016 Special Prize of the French Association des économistes de l’énergie, to be translated and published in China in 2017 and in the USA in 2018. Guest blogger at Le Monde since 2010. Director of The Shift Project, the French carbon transition think tank.

Greg Muttitt is Senior Adviser at Oil Change International, a research and advocacy group that seeks to accelerate the global transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Greg has worked on oil, energy, and climate change since 1997. From 2003 to 2012, he was a leading analyst on the future of post-war Iraq’s oil, and is author of Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq (pub. Random House, 2011).

Since 2014 he has studied and written on scenarios for the future of energy. He is author of Oil Change International’s groundbreaking 2016 report The Sky’s Limit: Why the Paris Goals Require a Managed Decline of the Fossil Fuel Industry. He has written several articles on OPEC’s role in the age of climate change.

Robin, CEO of Qamar Energy (Dubai), is an expert on Middle East energy strategy and economics, described by Foreign Policy as “one of the energy world’s great minds.” He is the author of two books, The Myth of the Oil Crisis and Capturing Carbon, columnist on energy and environmental issues at The National, and comments widely on energy issues in the media, including the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Atlantic, CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, and others.

He worked for a decade for Shell, concentrating on new business development in the Middle East, followed by six years with Dubai Holding and the Emirates National Oil Company.

He is Non-Resident Fellow for Energy at the Brookings Doha Center, holds a first-class degree in Geology from the University of Cambridge, and speaks five languages including Arabic and Farsi.

Born in Qatar in 1952, H.E. Al-Attiyah has more than 40 years of experience in the energy industry and has served in a variety of senior leadership positions within the government of Qatar.

In 1992, H.E. Al-Attiyah was appointed Minister of Energy & Industry and Chairman and Managing Director of Qatar Petroleum, before being entrusted with the additional responsibility of Second Deputy Prime Minister in 2003. He was elected as Chairman of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in 2006; Then H.E. was elevated to Deputy Prime Minister, and in 2011 was appointed Chief of the Amiri Diwan. Afterword, H.E. held the presidency of the Administrative Control and transparency Authority in the State of Qatar, and then he took over the presidency of the 18th Session of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, known as the (COP18/CMP18) hosted by the Qatari in 2012. H.E. also participated in many important International and Regional Conferences.

During his illustrious career H.E received many accolades and awards. On December 20, 2011, H.E. was honored by H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar at the time with the Necklace of Independence, and also awarded him the degree of the Prime Minister. H.E. received the Grand Cordon in Orange Nassau conferred by Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Kingdom of Netherlands, and the Order of the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor of Japan. H.E received a badge of honor (Médaille d'honneur) from the President of the French Republic — the rank of a senior officer in 2014, and the Order of the Lebanese national rice as an officer in the year 2000, and the Lebanese Order of Merit of the first class in 2005, and the Order of the Faculty Graduates Engineering from the American University of Beirut in 2006.

H.E. was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Texas A&M in May 2011, and an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Torvergata, Italy on February 11, 2016.

Dr. Majid Al-Moneef is the Secretary General and a member of the Supreme Economic Council of Saudi Arabia and served from 2003-2013 as Saudi Arabia’s Governor to OPEC and from 1992-2003 as its representative to the organization’s Economic Commission Board. He was a member of the Economic and Energy Committee of the Majlis Ash Shura (Consultative Assembly), the Chairman of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Energy Team, president of the Saudi Economic Association, vice dean and professor of economics at King Saud University, and advisor to the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.

Dr. AL-Moneef is a member of Saudi Aramco’s Board of Directors, the International Advisory Group of King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), the Oxford Energy Policy Club. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Cairo based Economic Research Forum, the editorial Board of the Saudi Economic Journal and the advisory Board of OPEC Energy Review.

Khair El-Din Haseeb is Chairman of the Executive Council of the Centre for Arab Unity Studies in Beirut. In the 1960s he has held different government positions in Iraq: Governor for Iraq at the IMF, Member of the Board of the Iraqi National Oil Company, Governor and Chairman of the Board of the Central Bank of Iraq. He had been professor of Economics at the University of Baghdad before leaving the country in 1976. From 1981 to 2011 he was Director General of the Centre for Arab Unity Studies.

Dr. Ramzi Salman, a graduate of Birmingham University, started his professional life in 1962 teaching at Baghdad University then moved to the Iraq National Oil Company as head of petroleum engineering. In 1972, established SOMO, and remained its Coe until moving to Vienna in 1991 as OPEC's Deputy Secretary General. In 1997 took up the post of senior advisor to Qatar's Minister of Energy, retiring in 2013.

Professor Paul Stevens is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. He was educated as an economist and as a specialist on the Middle East at Cambridge and SOAS. He is also professor emeritus at the University of Dundee and a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics (Japan). Until recently he was also a visiting professor at University College London (Australia). In March 2009, he was presented with the OPEC Award for outstanding work on oil economics.