QatarEnergy’s Al-Kaabi Named Energy Executive of the Year

Energy Intelligence, publisher of International Oil Daily and Oil Daily, announced that Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, president and CEO of QatarEnergy, has been chosen as the “Energy Executive of the Year” for 2022.

Al-Kaabi will receive his award, which is based on the nominations and votes of top industry executives, at a gala dinner and award ceremony in his honor during the Energy Intelligence Forum 2022, which will be held in London from Oct. 4-6.

“Al-Kaabi’s bold bet on the future of gas has positioned Qatar to be the world’s LNG supplier of choice,” said Energy Intelligence Chairman and CEO Raja Sidawi. “His decision to go large on energy investments at home and abroad ensures that Qatar stays a step ahead of its competition and allows it to continue to play an outsized role in global energy, geopolitics and culture.”

Al-Kaabi was named President and CEO of Qatar Petroleum in 2016 and has guided a program of expansion and modernization that has made it the world’s top LNG supplier and a leading national oil company globally.

Those changes included consolidating the group’s subsidiaries into a streamlined company, growing an international upstream portfolio and embarking upon the ambitious expansion of the gas production from the North Field .

That expansion, which will add almost 50 million tons per year of LNG production capacity will allow Qatar to once again be the largest producer in the global LNG industry.

In 2021, he oversaw the change of the company’s name from Qatar Petroleum to QatarEnergy to reflect the company’s leading efforts in pairing carbon capture technology with its LNG liquefaction facilities and its focus on energy efficiency.

In 2018, al-Kaabi was appointed as Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs, where he has played an outsized role in the global negotiations to secure alternatives Europe's Push for Gas, Security to Russian natural gas supplies for European countries following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Al-Kaabi holds a bachelor of science degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering from Pennsylvania State University and began his career with Qatar Petroleum in 1986 while still a student.

Upon his graduation in 1991, he joined the company’s Reservoir and Field Development department where he quickly moved up through a variety of roles with increasing responsibility.

Energy Intelligence gathers nominations for the Energy Executive of the Year – known before 2019 as the Petroleum Executive of the Year – from the heads of the world's 100 largest oil and gas companies, as determined by the annual Energy Intelligence Top 100 rankings.

Nominations are then voted on by a special selection committee made up of previous award winners and other senior executives.

Previous winners of the award include Sultan al-Jaber of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (2021), Amin Nasser of Saudi Aramco (2020), Ben van Beurden of Royal Dutch Shell (2019), Bob Dudley of BP (2018).