Qatar Honours Ex-Exxon Chief Exec
A leading Qatari foundation is to make a lifetime achievement award to the first CEO of ExxonMobil, Lee Raymond, in Doha on May 7.
The former CEO will be the 2018 recipient of The Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award for the Advancement of International Energy Policy & Diplomacy, presented by the Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah International Foundation for Energy & Sustainable Development, known as the Abha foundation. “Lee Raymond has been an inspirational figure throughout his half-century career in the oil industry, but it is his tactical insight in steering ExxonMobil towards sustainable growth in a low and high oil price era which defines his leadership qualities,” said the foundation's chairman, Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah.
Al-Attiyah steered Qatar's emergence as the world's largest LNG exporter whilst the country's energy minister from 1992 to 2011, fostering Mobil and later ExxonMobil's role as the largest foreign equity partner in most of the 14 Qatargas-controlled LNG export trains and upstream feed-gas projects developed during that period. He was also deputy prime minister from 2007 to 2011. As well as Al-Attiyah, the Abha board comprises six other top Qatari officials and advisers, including a current and a former CEO of Qatar Petroleum, and the influential former Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi.
Abha said Raymond's landmark achievements included, in his first year as CEO, acquiring in 1999 US rival Mobil along with its prized LNG interests in Qatar, propelling ExxonMobil’s market value fourfold to $375bn by the end of his CEO tenure in 2005, overtaking BP as the largest global oil company and displacing General Electric as the largest US corporation. Raymond said he was "honoured and humbled" by the award. Past recipients have included former Saudi petroleum minister Ali Al-Naimi; and the former Shell and Total CEOs, respectively Mark Moody-Stuart and the late Christophe de Margerie, both companies also being investors in Qatar's gas projects.
Former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond (Photo credit: Abha foundation)