The former minister of energy and industry, Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, remains deputy prime minister. He will also serve as chairman of the emiri diwan, or the emir’s court, which acts as the center of government for the country’s hereditary ruler.
Replacing Al-Attiyah as energy minister is Mohammed Saleh Al-Sada, who previously held a less senior Cabinet post as minister of state for energy and industry.
Al-Sada is managing director of RasGas, a state company responsible for running a number of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas production sites. It has partnerships with several international energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp.
Al-Attiyah was present for his replacement’s swearing-in by Qatar’s emir Tuesday morning, state-run Qatar News Agency reported. He has been the country’s energy minister since 1992, overseeing a period of booming industrial growth that turned the tiny peninsular country into a major exporter of oil and gas.
No reason was given for the surprise shift. The energy minister typically serves as Qatar’s representative to the 12-member OPEC.
Qatar sits atop the world’s third largest natural gas reserves and ranks as the planet’s biggest supplier of liquefied natural gas. It now has capacity to produce 77 million tons of the super-cooled fuel annually and a fleet of mammoth tankers specially designed to transport it to markets around the world, including Japan, Italy and Britain The energy bounty has made Qatar’s citizens among the richest in the world. It also provides cash for lavish government spending on investments such as the Al-Jazeera television network and the 2022 football World Cup, which Qatar won the right to host last month.
