The seminars have taken various forms over the years, but they have always had a wide reach across the energy sector and beyond.
The latest in the series of seminars, which began in 2001, has provided fresh impetus to key industry issues and developed existing and new avenues of dialogue and cooperation. Insightful presentations and panel discussions have sought to move the energy debate forward, with high-calibre speakers discussing a wide range of topical issues affecting the industry, both in the short and long term.
The seminars have increased in size and scope over the years, embracing, as time has passed, such related areas as global finance, sustainable development and the environment, and their reputation has grown steadily. While an early seminar in 1978 was attended by some 200 participants, there was nearly four times that number over three decades later in 2012. The 2018 instalment attracted a record 950 participants from over 50 nations.
The very first OPEC seminar, although not part of the present series, was held in Vienna on 30 June-5 July 1969, with the topical theme of ‘International oil and the energy policies of the producing and consuming countries’.
There was then a gap of more than eight years before the next seminar, which turned out to be the first in a mini-series, listed as follows:
Another decade passed before there was a one-off ‘Seminar on the environment’ in April 1992, to help acquaint OPEC Member Countries with key environmental issues in the build-up to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in the June of that year.
The new and current series of the ‘OPEC International Seminar’
began one year into the New Millennium. It comprises:
