Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy Khalid Al-Falih is considered to be one of the most influential individuals on the global oil market. Traders, investors and officials keep close tabs on his comments, which can spark serious price changes to the world’s ‘black gold’. Al-Falih, who has worked his entire life in the oil sector, has gone through all corporate hierarchy levels of the Saudi Aramco oil giant and naturally, after having served as the company’s chief executive, he took over the leadership of the country’s oil sector.

Under Al-Falih, relations between Russia and OPEC started developing by leaps and bounds and resulted in a deal being reached between OPEC member-states and oil producing countries, which are not part of the cartel (OPEC+), and this made the situation on the oil market more predictable. It is also mainly thanks to Al-Falih’s efforts that Saudi Arabia has been actively working with the Russian Direct Investment Fund and its head Kirill Dmitriev. Al-Falih said RDIF is “an important bridge” between the two countries.

In his interview with TASS, the Kingdom’s Minister of Energy Khalid Al-Falih spoke about what the future holds for the OPEC+ deal in 2019, whether oil prices in 2019 will surpass $100 per barrel, and whether Saudi Arabia will use oil as political leverage in the case of Saudi journalist Khashoggi, who went missing in Istanbul. In addition, he will also talk about working with the Russian Direct Investment Fund, and Saudi plans for investing into Russian companies, and a joint venture with Rosneft and meetings with Igor Sechin.​