Kuwaiti Haitham Al-Ghais was appointed Secretary General of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on Monday (January 3), the cartel announced on the eve of its monthly meeting.
This veteran, with decades of experience in the sector, will take office in August for three years. He will replace Nigerian Mohammed Barkindo, in office since 2016, as OPEC faces the challenge of resuming demand for black gold after the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Secretary General of OPEC has no executive power; he is the public figure of the organization and sometimes acts as a diplomat to facilitate discussions between countries with divergent interests, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, or more recently with the United Arab Emirates. “Mr. Al-Ghais is a veteran of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC)”, State conglomerate of which he was notably the director of the office in Beijing then in London, and “Was OPEC governor for Kuwait from 2017 to June 2021”, specifies the organization in a press release.
The organization, headquartered in Vienna, Austria, “Expresses his gratitude” to M. Barkindo “For his leadership during his two consecutive terms”. Under the latter’s leadership, OPEC joined forces with ten other countries, including Russia, in an OPEC + agreement signed in 2016.
While the group was losing influence on the market with the boom in shale oil in the United States, this alliance has notably enabled producers to limit their extraction of black gold since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. An effort which raised prices after a very marked shock on the market in April 2020, but which is subject to criticism from consumer countries, in particular the United States.