Ibrahim Al-Buainain has been president and CEO of Aramco Trading Co. since July 2016.
He was recently chosen, alongside six other industry leaders from the energy, shipping, storage, and refining sectors, to be part of the international selection committee for the Aramco Trading New Silk Road CEO of the Year Awards 2020.
The awards were founded in 2017, in partnership with the Port of Fujairah in the UAE, to recognize the outstanding achievements of business leaders from around the world in the categories of trading, refining, storage, and ports.
Al-Buainain has more than 26 years of experience in the oil and gas industry and has served in a number of key roles at Saudi Aramco.
He gained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, an MBA in global management, and a masters’ degree in innovation and global leadership from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also took part in an executive management program at the IMD business school in Switzerland.
Al-Buainain joined Saudi Aramco as an operations engineer at its Ras Tanura refinery in the Eastern Province and in 1995 he became lead project engineer for the Shaybah program. From 1998 through 2004, he worked for the Saudi Aramco Joint Venture Co. in South Korea as general manager.
In 2004, he was appointed as portfolio manager for all Saudi Aramco international joint ventures and three years later was named as director of the Asia joint venture department, managing Aramco business in the Asia Pacific region out of Hong Kong.
In 2009, Al-Buainain was made director for the Rabigh Phase-II development project. After holding several key positions, he was promoted to the position of global head for transaction development in 2015.