Saudi Aramco boss pulls out of major international energy conference due to Iran conflict, source says
* Source says CERAWeek organizers were informed of Nasser’s withdrawal
* Aramco faces biggest challenges since COVID-19 and 2019 attacks
* Source says CEO of Kuwaiti state oil company KPC will attend virtually
* Abu Dhabi wealth fund Mubadala managers unlikely to attend, source says
Written by: Maha El Dahan and Yousef Saba
DUBAI, March 22 (Reuters) – Saudi Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser canceled plans to attend the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston to stay in Saudi Arabia due to the Iran conflict.
Nasser, who has been CEO of the world’s largest oil exporter for more than a decade, is often one of the keynote speakers at the conference, one of the energy industry’s biggest events.
CERAWeek, organized by S&P Global and starting on Monday, brings together senior executives, government officials and policymakers from around the world to discuss the global energy market outlook.
Nasser’s withdrawal shows the extent of the difficulty he faces in dealing with the Iran crisis.
The source stated that he will not present a recorded video message for the CERAWeek conference, adding that the event organizers have been informed.
The conflict, now in its fourth week, has killed more than 2,000 people, roiled global markets and spurred retaliatory attacks by Iran that have effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz and targeted Gulf energy infrastructure, including Aramco’s.
US President Donald Trump and Iran have threatened to escalate the war by targeting energy and fuel facilities in the Gulf. On Saturday, Trump threatened to bomb Iran’s power plants if Tehran does not fully reopen the Strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies normally flow.
Sheikh Nawaf Al-Sabah, CEO of state-owned Kuwait Oil Company, will also not attend the Houston meeting but will attend the Tuesday session of the conference virtually from Kuwait, a separate source said.
ENERGY INSTALLATIONS ARE UNDER ATTACK
Aramco is facing its biggest crisis since the COVID-19 pandemic and attacks on Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais facilities in 2019 that temporarily knocked out more than half of Saudi crude oil production.
Nasser told reporters during his earnings call on March 10 that there would be “catastrophic consequences” for world oil markets if the Iran war continued to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz.
Aramco moves millions of barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil from the east coast to the west coast to bypass the strait. Oil production from the two fields fell by about 2 million barrels per day, Reuters reported.
The alternative route would mean tankers loading at the Red Sea port of Yanbu; That port temporarily halted loading last week, causing prices to rise following ballistic missile interference and a drone attack on an adjacent refinery.
The SAMREF refinery, an Aramco-Exxon joint venture, was hit by a drone on March 19, as Iran targeted energy facilities in the Gulf, including Kuwait, in response to Israeli attacks on the South Pars gas field.
This wave of attacks has hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas complex, with QatarEnergy chief telling Reuters that 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity will be offline for up to five years.
Abu Dhabi wealth fund Mubadala is unlikely to have any representatives at the event, a source familiar with the matter said.
It was not immediately clear whether Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the UAE’s oil company ADNOC, would attend in person. He is listed as a speaker on the event’s website. ADNOC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At last year’s conference, Jaber said it was time to “make energy great again”, echoing Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan as he promised major investments in the US by ADNOC’s international investment arm XRG. Nasser told CERAWeek last year that Elvis had a better chance of speaking out than current energy transition plans away from fossil fuels succeeding.
(Reporting by Maha El Dahan and Yousef Saba. Written by Yousef Saba. Edited by Jane Merriman)
