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Oil Leaders

Oil Leaders: An Insider’s Account of Four Decades of Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s Global Energy Policy

Oil Leaders discusses how the personalities of decision makers, ranging from energy ministers to heads of state, have influenced major oil market decisions and outcomes over the last four decades, a subject that has not been analyzed before.

The book has been reviewed by many major academic and media outlets, including Bloomberg and the Financial Times.

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Oil Leaders Book Reviews

The following are some of the book reviews that were published by renowned media entities and/or written by distinguished experts in the field.

Foreign Affairs •

Book Review: "Oil Leaders" by Ibrahim AlMuhanna

This book is an unexpectedly candid glimpse into the usually murky world of Saudi oil policy by an unusually knowledgeable guide: AlMuhanna was an adviser to the Saudi Ministry of Petroleum (now Ministry of Energy), working with pivotal actors for nearly 30 years. Thoughtful and perceptive, he emphasizes the role of individual leaders in making policy: variations in knowledge, education, ambition, and skill loom large when formal institutions, from international organizations to domestic bureaucracies, are new or fragile.
H-Environment •

Review of AlMuhanna, Ibrahim, Oil Leaders: An Insider’s Account of Four Decades of Saudi Arabia and OPEC's Global Energy Policy

From 1989 to 2017, Ibrahim AlMuhanna was a senior official at the Saudi Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources (now the Ministry of Energy). His new book, Oil Leaders, is a memoir of his time at the ministry, combined with a study of Saudi policy and OPEC’s history since the 1980s. Oil Leaders offers a rare view inside the Saudi government, providing insight into the forces behind Saudi policy.
Survival (International Institute for Strategic Studies) •

Oil Leaders: An Insider’s Account of Four Decades of Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s Global Energy Policy

Oil Leaders reveals the agency of individuals. Too often the perception is that impersonal market forces determine everything, but political leaders do matter and the decisions they make do have an impact. A disastrous leader such as Chávez can still bankrupt a rich country, while more cagey politicians can often advance their country’s interests with little exertion.
Ahram Online •

Ibrahim AlMuhanna and the war in Ukraine - Opinion - Al-Ahram Weekly

The title might sound unrelated, but patience please. It might present the key to one of the most crucial dimensions of the Ukrainian war: oil and energy, in general. Ibrahim AlMuhanna’s recently published Oil Leaders: An Insider’s Account of Four Decades of Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s Global Energy Policy (Columbia University Press, May 2022) may not cover developments related to that war, but it offers insights that make the scramble surrounding the current global energy crisis easier to grasp...
Bloomberg •

Saudi Arabia’s Chief Oil Whisperer Spills Some of His Secrets

Wall Street has Fed-speak – a turgid dialect of English, a mixture of obfuscation and cryptic messaging. The oil market has Saudi-speak – a language of smoke-and-mirrors, a combination of bewildering and byzantine communication typically delivered behind closed doors. A new book provides a lexicon of four decades of verbal intervention in the price of crude by the world’s biggest oil-producing nation.


Saudi Arabia has usually delivered clearer signals than the Federal Reserve, but its semaph

Interviews

Recent interviews in which Dr. AlMuhanna talks about Oil Leaders, ongoing events in the energy market, and more.

S&P Global •

Saudi oil whisperer Muhanna warns against doubting kingdom's production capacity

In mid-2008, with oil prices on their way to setting a record high of $147/b, OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia faced a chorus of doubts about how much crude it was capable of producing. Some analysts even said the kingdom was pumping near its maximum volumes.

To hear Ibrahim al-Muhanna tell it, those analysts were wrong, and the market is risking making the same mistake in 2022, as fears over shrinking Saudi spare capacity are dominating oil headlines.

"The market should not worry" about Saudi Arabia
Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA •

Saudi Arabia’s Outsized Impact On Global Oil

President Biden is heading to Saudi Arabia next month amidst a global energy crisis. The trip is nothing new. For decades when faced with an oil crisis, presidents from both political parties have turned to Saudi Arabia.

That’s because it’s one of the key players in the global oil market, producing about 10% of the world’s oil.

For a deep dive into the unique role that Saudi Arabia plays in global oil markets, host Jason Bordoff spoke with Dr. Ibrahim AlMuhanna. He’s the vice chairman of the Saudi Association for Energy Economics and a longtime advisor to the Ministry of Energy for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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The book is available in hard-copy format & as an eBook.

About

Dr. AlMuhanna is an energy consultant, author, academic, businessman, and a former Saudi and OPEC Plus official.

Throughout his career, he served under four distinguished Saudi energy ministers, offering them advice, input, and analyses about media and public relations, policymaking, OPEC and OPEC Plus affairs, and other issues that pertain to the oil market.

Known as the “Gulf Source”, he was frequently interviewed and quoted by the media, and his comments about major oil market events regularly made international headlines.

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