Saudi Arabia has nominated a candidate for OPEC's next secretary-general, a Gulf OPEC delegate familiar with the matter said. The current secretary general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Abdullah Al-Badri of Libya, completes his second and final three-year term at the end of 2012. OPEC will seek to select a replacement, to start in 2013, at its next meeting in June. Saudi Arabia has nominated Majid Al-Moneef, Saudi's governor at OPEC, for the post, the OPEC delegate told Reuters. "There is a lot of support for Moneef. He's well respected and an experienced economist," the Gulf OPEC delegate said. The secretary general is the 12-member organization's lead representative on the world stage, helps formulate the group's output policy and is in charge of OPEC's secretariat in Vienna. If agreement on Moneef were achieved, he would be the first Saudi secretary general of OPEC since Mohammad Saleh Joukhdar served a one-year term in 1967, the sole Saudi in the post so far. "The secretariat has had an important role in recent months in bringing members together and the production estimates provided by them are the ones being followed," said an OPEC delegate.
