The man who used to move the oil market with a word, is done talking about it
But Ali al-Naimi, who has just launched his book, Out of the Desert: My Journey From Nomadic Bedouin to the Heart of Global Oil, is happy to talk about solar energy
Singapore — For more than two decades, the oil market hung to Ali al-Naimi’s every word — whether he was taking a characteristic stroll at dawn on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, hurrying through a hotel lobby after a conference, or dodging throngs of reporters at an Opec meeting. Now that he is done with his near 21-year stint as Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, during which his utterances could move everything from crude to currencies and stocks worldwide, al-Naimi says he does not want to talk about the market anymore. "As far as oil prices and oil, I have left that behind," he said on Friday at an event in Singapore to launch his book Out of the Desert: My Journey From Nomadic Bedouin to the Heart of Global Oil. Al-Naimi was the architect of the 2014 strategy by oil cartel Opec to continue pumping amid a global glut to squeeze out higher-cost producers including US shale drillers. After becoming oil minister in 1995, he steered the world’s largest crude exporter through wild price swings, reg...
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