The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was officially created in 1960 during a conference held in Baghdad. Its first members were the governments of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.

Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, the Venezuelan Minister of Oil, and Abdullah Al Tariki, the first Saudi Oil Minister, are often credited with the name of “founders of OPEC.”

The seminar is dedicated to explore the intellectual background and the political achievements of these two key figures of the history of OPEC and of their respective countries. It also aims at explaining how two countries with such diverse cultural, political, and geographical history came to recognize the need for international cooperation by the end of the 1950s.

The seminar is organized by Dr. Giuliano Garavini (University of Padua and Senior Research Fellow at NYUAD Institute) within the framework of the NYUAD Humanities Research Fellowship Program coordinated by Professor Reindert Falkenburg.