Saudi Arabia’s enduring energy minister

Ali Al-Naimi's 70-year career saw him literally rise from the desert shop floor to become the world’s most powerful oil executive for almost three decades.

Former Petroleum and Mineral Resources Minister Ali Al-Naimi is part of a generation of exceptional men fired by the passion to succeed.
Nowhere is this feeling stronger than among the Bedouins, for they carry in their hearts an endurance and resolve nurtured by the very harshness of their lives.
“This life made you tough. We were survivors,” Al-Naimi writes in his recently published autobiography, “Out of the Desert: My Journey from Nomadic Bedouin to the heart of Global Oil.”
It was this spirit of survival that propelled a desert boy from the Al-Naimi tribe on a journey that would see him hold one of the world’s most powerful political and economic positions for more than 20 years.
The author dwells little on his early years, yet it is that part of his life that many find so fascinating.
“The world I was born into in 1935 had remained all but unchanged for hundreds of years… It was a way of life largely untouched by the modern world,” he wrote.
“To say we didn’t understand modern finance and technology would be an understatement; most of those in this tribal culture had no knowledge that such things existed at all. I could just as easily have been born in the 1830s, the 1730s, or possibly even the 1630s and had a very similar barefooted boyhood to the one I experienced in the Saudi Arabia of my youth.”
Al-Naimi, like many Saudis of his generation, was impatient to move ahead and forge a new destiny. A nomadic existence quickly became a thing of the past, something to be forgotten and replaced with the dream of a better life. A Bedouin is down to earth, and the hope of a good future became a top priority.
An early start in business
The first step toward change came when his 13-year-old brother Abdullah, who was an office boy for Aramco and a student at the company’s Jebel School, asked his 8-year-old brother Ali to come to school with him. School started at 7 a.m. and they walked 15 km, carrying their leather sandals on their shoulders so they would not wear out.
When his brother died unexpectedly of pneumonia, Ali became his family’s chief breadwinner. Aramco offered him his brother’s job, which carried a salary of SR90 ($24) a month. But nine months later, the Saudi government issued a set of labor laws that forbade child labor. Aramco could no longer employ boys under the age of 18.
Al-Naimi had to convince his employer that he was 18, not 12. Audacious and courageous, he managed to persuade a physician that he was older than he really was. Dr. Hassan sympathized with the 12-year-old, who was desperately trying to secure a job to help his family.
Aramco was very much aware of the age issue and Frank Jungers, a former chairman and CEO of the company, mentioned this in his memoir: “Saudis who wanted to be hired by Aramco — especially the brightest or those with parents trying to get them a job, would claim that they were 18, the minimum hiring stage. Most of them would not know what 18 actually meant in those early days, but they were nonetheless 18! When asked their age, they would say: Yimkin (maybe) 18,” he wrote.

Rise through the ranks
Al-Naimi has always been focused on his career. Although the Aramco personnel department was training him to become an employment counselor, he decided to study geology and join the exploration department.
He was well aware that previous presidents had worked in that department. When General Manager Scott Segar, who supervised exploration, asked him why he chose to study geology, he answered without hesitation: “I want to be president of the company.”
Al-Naimi finished his masters in geology in 1964 and returned to Saudi Arabia. After decades working through the ranks, he was named vice president of Aramco at age 40, and 13 years later, in 1988, he was appointed the first Saudi CEO of Saudi Aramco.
In a surprising move, Al-Naimi announced in 1993 that he planned to retire when he was 60. He addressed a letter to the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Hisham Nazer to inform him of his decision. The letter was forwarded to King Fahd, who rejected the request. Al-Naimi was back in the oil business, unaware of what the future had in store for him.

Ministerial calling
In 1995, he flew to Alaska to join a salmon trip. Eager to enjoy this short holiday, he asked his management team to handle his calls and messages. However, there was a call he could not ignore: Ibrahim Al-Angary, special adviser to King Fahd.
“Sheikh Ibrahim, what is it that you want? I’m in Alaska trying to fish for salmon,” said Al-Naimi.
Al-Angary replied: “You have been appointed Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. Please return to the Kingdom on Wednesday, when it will be announced.”
It was Monday. Time was running out, yet he went straight back fishing. He soon realized he had no choice but to return to Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the company plane, he returned and swore his allegiance to the king as planned.
His appointment marked the first time that the office of oil minister went to an oil executive, rather than a political appointee. With Al-Naimi’s nomination, the Kingdom desired to be seen as a leading and stabilizing force in the oil business.
In 2014, he was the architect of a major switch in OPEC policy that shook the energy market, companies and entire economies from Mexico to Nigeria. The Kingdom abandoned its policy of taking its output up or down to balance oil prices, and kept pumping oil to protect its market share.
This caused an oil glut, and the price of a barrel hit an all-time low. Rather than cut back to sustain prices near $100 a barrel, Al-Naimi squeezed higher-cost producers, particularly the US shale oil producers.
In a recent interview with Roula Khalaf of the Financial Times, Al-Naimi said: “I didn’t think or say we want to take shale out. I said we don’t want to lose more market share. Let the price be decided by the market. Anybody who thinks he or any country is going to influence the price in today’s environment is out of his mind.”
Al-Naimi’s replacement in last May came as the Kingdom looked beyond the resource on which it has relied for so long. But Al-Naimi left the business with a recurrent idea that he had not finished his business. He wants to know whether his change of policy has paid off. Maybe that will be the subject of his next book?
“There will never be another Ali Al-Naimi,” said Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, former minister of energy and industry in Qatar, when he presented Al-Naimi with the 2016 honorary lifetime achievement award for the advancement of international energy policy and diplomacy.
“He oversaw the policies and astonishing growth of the world’s biggest oil company and oil exporter... No matter if he was working in a small group in a boardroom or facing cameras from all over the world, Al-Naimi was always gracious and knowledgeable. His 70-year career saw him literally rise from the desert shop floor to become the world’s most powerful oil executive for almost three decades.”
This summarizes most succinctly the incredible journey that Al-Naimi recounts in “Out of the Desert.” This book tells the life story of a man who knew exactly what he wanted, and went out and got it.