The Board of Trustees of the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC) has appointed engineer Fahad Alajlan as centre President and Adam Sieminski as a Senior Advisor to the board of trustees.

Alajlan was previously the director of the Hydrocarbon Sustainability Program at the Ministry of Energy, where he looked at the long-term energy trends and their impact on energy markets including global demand for oil and gas.

He also worked at the Ministry of Economy and Planning, advising on energy markets, policy, and trends, as well as the industry and petrochemical sector. Additionally, he oversees the Circular Carbon Economy National Program.

Alajlan’s experience spans several senior roles in operation, corporate strategy and investment planning, as well as mergers and acquisitions at Aramco, where he served for 15 years.

Alajlan’s presidency will build on the momentum the centre has been seeing under Sieminski, who led KAPSARC in supporting the Saudi energy ecosystem in introducing the Circular Carbon Economy and the Think 20 (T20) engagement group under the Saudi G20 2020 presidency. During Sieminski’s tenure as President of KAPSARC, the centre climbed to higher positions in the Global Go To Think Tank Index Report issued by the University of Pennsylvania, where it now ranks 12th out of 60 research centres in the ‘Energy and Resource Policy Think Tank’ category, and is placed 15th out of 101 amongst research centres in the Mena region.