LONDON/DUBAI: Opec is again attempting to break the deadlock over selecting its next secretary general, after rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran last year prevented a new candidate being named to its top administrative post.
A panel of officials is meeting this weekend at the Vienna headquarters of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to discuss criteria for the secretary general post, Opec delegates said. Abdullah Al Badri’s one-year term in the job ends in December.
The deadlock has highlighted political tensions within the 12-country group that have increased due to Western sanctions on Iran. In a break with tradition, Opec in December reappointed Badri, a Libyan, for a third term after candidates from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq failed to gain a consensus.
The secretary general is the main representative on the world stage of the producer group, helps formulate its output policy and is in charge of Opec’s Vienna secretariat.
Opec’s panel, which consists of Opec governors — officials who represent their countries on the board of governors — is only deciding criteria for the postholder. Oil ministers will then have the tough task of appointing a candidate. “Every member-country has to agree on the new secretary general, so it has to be a candidate acceptable to every country,” one of the delegates said.
Opec delegates say that for now, the three candidates are still Saudi Arabia’s Opec Governor, Majid Al-Moneef; Thamir Ghadhban, energy adviser to Iraq’s prime minister; and former Iranian oil minister Gholam Hossein Nozari.
This could change, say Opec delegates, once the issue goes before Opec’s oil ministers at the group’s May 31 meeting in Vienna, where they will also decide Opec’s output policy for the second half of 2013. Opec has often struggled to agree on a secretary general. The appointment of Badri starting in 2007 ended a three-year impasse over the job. When it reappointed him in December for one year, Opec waived its own statute stating that a secretary general should serve no more than two, three-year terms.
The post has tended to go to officials from smaller Opec producers to spread influence beyond top producer Saudi Arabia and Iran, Opec’s traditional No. 2 whose output was overtaken by Iraq in 2012 as sanctions curb Iran’s sales. As well as setting criteria for the secretary general, the Opec governors are also due to recommend a successor to Hasan Qabazard, a Kuwaiti, as the group’s head of research, the second most senior post at Opec after the secretary general.
There are two candidates, an Iranian and a Saudi, for the research job, a delegate said.
Reuters
