Oil & Gas
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Alison-Madueke, minister of petroleum resources, has been elected the first female president of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries
| By Olu Ojewale | Dec. 8, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT |
DIEZANI Alison-Madueke, minister of petroleum resources, has emerged as the first female president of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. Alison-Madueke was elected president of the OPEC on Thursday, Novembers 27, at the ongoing 166th General Meeting of the body in Vienna, Austria.
She replaces Abdourhman Atahar Al-Ahirish, Libyan vice-prime Minister for Corporations, who held the post until Thursday election. The Nigerian oil minister had been the alternative president of the organisation. She is expected to immediately begin to serve her one-year term at the helm of the OPEC affairs.
OPEC, which is expected to take some crucial decisions at the meeting has already decided to retain the current quota, even in the face of dwindling price of crude oil.
Al-Ahirishhad in his opening remarks before the closed door meeting stated that ample supply, moderate demand, a stronger United States dollar and uncertainties in the global economic growth had been key factors in the recent price trend. This, he said, was in addition to the impact of speculative activities in the oil market.
Alison-Madueke, 53, has many firsts to her name. In April 2006, she became the first woman to be appointed to the board of Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria by her position as an executive director. Thereafter, she has become the first female Nigerian to hold three ministerial positions. She was appointed minister of transport in July 2007. In December 2008, she was named minister of mines and steel development. After Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan became acting president in February 2010, he dissolved the cabinet on March 17, 2010, and on April 6, 2010, Alison-Madueke was sworn-in as minister of Petroleum Resources.
In October 2010, she became the first woman to head a country delegation at the annual OPEC conference. On November 27, she got elected as the first female president of the OPEC.
As petroleum resources minister, Alison-Madueke has pledged to transform Nigeria’s oil and gas industry for all Nigerians benefit. She is one of the advocates of removal of subsidies on fuel prices, arguing that that it “poses a huge financial burden on the government, disproportionately benefits the wealthy, and encourages inefficiency, corruption and diversion of scarce public resources away from investment in critical infrastructure.”
The current OPEC president was born in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, on December 6, 1960. She studied architecture at Howard University in the United States, where she graduated in 1992. Thereafter, he returned to Nigeria and joined Shell Petroleum Development Company Nigeria. In 2002, Alison-Madueke was at the Cambridge University, England for her MBA.
She has been married to Allison Madueke, a retired admiral and one time chief of Naval Staff since 1999. In September 2011 Alison-Madueke was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Management Sciences by the Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna.
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