The kingdom's new oil chief

Khalid al-Falih is now the man who will oversee the sweeping strategic changes underway in Saudi oil and energy policy

FEW Saudis know the kingdom's energy sector better than Khalid al-Falih, who has spent his entire career working for Aramco in a range of different roles. After graduating in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M University he joined the national oil company and within a few years was showing signs of management potential. By his early thirties he was running maintenance at Ras Tanura refinery. Falih's career then took a sharp turn when he was transferred to Petron, a joint venture between Aramco and the national oil company of the Philippines. On returning to the kingdom his next assignment was to negotiate terms under which international oil companies would explore for natural gas - the