Saudi Aramco president and CEO Amin Nasser has been announced as the recipient of the prestigious Kavaler Award for 2020. The award by the U.S.-based Chemists Club is sponsored by leading chemical industry publisher Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS). Industry peers and senior executives in the ICIS Top 40 Power Players vote for the award winner each year.
Nasser is the first person ever to have won both the Kavaler Award and the award for Energy Executive of the Year by Energy Intelligence, and the first to win in the same year. He’s also the first person from the Asia region to receive the Kavaler award.
Selection criteria
The award will be presented to Nasser later this year at a virtual event that will include a fireside chat with ICIS about Aramco’s strategy, outlook, and key trends of the energy and petrochemicals industries.
During the selection process, industry peers invited by ICIS and the Chemists’ Club voted for three individuals based on achievement in one or more of the following categories:
- Profitability or shareholder value
- Environmental, social, governance
- Innovation in technology, product, business process
- Merger and acquisition or projects
“Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser has made huge advances in petrochemicals with the $69 billion acquisition of SABIC, the construction of mega-projects worldwide and the ongoing development of crude oil to chemicals technology,” said Joseph Chang, global editor of ICIS Chemical Business, a publication owned by ICIS and its parent company, Reed Business Information.
“The level of project activity for Aramco is unprecedented for any company. Its global ambitions and investments in petrochemicals will create waves in the industry for years to come,” he added.
Past winners
Previous winners of the ICIS Kavaler Award include CEOs from some of the world’s top chemical companies, including LyondellBasell CEO Bob Patel (2018, 2019), BASF CEO Kurt Bock (2017), INEOS chairman Jim Ratcliffe (2016), former Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris (2015), former LyondellBasell CEO Jim Gallogly (2014), and former PPG CEO Charles Bunch (2013).
The Chemists’ Club is a nonprofit educational organization founded in 1898 with the goal to “promote the interests of chemists and those interested in the science and applications of chemistry.”