East Mediterranean Gas Considering the Regional Developments

Dr. Tarek Mitri (Moderator): is the President of Saint George University of Beirut and Former Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General in Libya. Mitri has also been a minister in four Lebanese governments: Information, Environment, Administrative Development, and Culture; and Acting Foreign Minister. He is also a member of the Strategic Board of Lebanon's Université Saint-Joseph ; the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Palestine Studies; and a Member of the Board of Directors of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. He has lectured in several universities in Lebanon, Europe, and North America.

Diana El Kaissy (Moderator): is an advisory board member at the Lebanese Oil and Gas Initiative-LOGI, an independent non-governmental organization based in Beirut working on promoting transparency and accountability in the petroleum sector in Lebanon.

She previously served as the Executive Director at LOGI. Between 2012 and mid-2017, Diana served as Regional Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa and Asia Pacific at Publish What You Pay, a global network that includes more than 800 civil society organizations advocating for transparency and accountability in the governance of natural resources.

Diana is a board member of the Palestine Association for the Children Encouragement of Sports (PACES), a British based charity organization that seeks to promote social development through engagement in sports for Palestinian children living in refugee camps in Lebanon. She was awarded the Client of the Year 2018 by Leadership Management International.

Diana is currently a member of the international EITI Board, representing civil society organizations.

Walid Khadduri: Member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Palestine Studies. Iraqi author on energy matters. He has written various articles and books on energy issues, including a book recently published in September 2022 by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing: “Fossil fuels and Sustainable Energy; Present and hybrid future of oil resources”.

Wissam al-Zahabi: Board Member and Head of Economic and Financial Department at the Lebanese Petroleum Administration. Prior to his appointment, he was working as an Energy Advisor at the office of the Prime Minister in Beirut. He was actively involved in the energy sector; he was part of the team that drafted the petroleum policy, the offshore petroleum law and the petroleum activities regulations. He has been involved with all aspects of energy chain (Hydrocarbon Strategy, gas infrastructure, LNG project, feasibility study of the refinery, gas sales agreements). He has a master’s degree in engineering from the AUB and an MBA in Finance from HEC Montreal and has publications on energy resource allocation using multi-objective goal programming.

Najat Saliba: Member of the parliament, originally from Lebanon, is a leading expert in climate change and pollution control. Holding a Ph.D. in Physical Science from University of Southern California, CA, she served as a professor at the American University of Beirut for over 20 years, specializing in air pollution and the chemical analysis of inhalable particles mainly deriving from tobacco and non-tobacco products. MP. Aoun has over 150 publications. She serves as a Member of the Scientific Board of the International Basic Science Programme (IBSP) at UNESCO and as a Chair of a Technical Advisory Group on the Global Air Quality Platform and Health (GAPH-TAG) at WHO.

Peter Stevenson: is the East Mediterranean Editor at MEES, covering Lebanon, Egypt, Cyprus, and Israel. He has been in the position for a decade now, in which time he has written exclusive stories on Chevron's entry into the region and water breakthrough issues at the ENI-operated Zohr gas field in Egypt. 

Mohamed Hamel: Fourth Secretary General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum took office on January 1, 2022. Prior to joining the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, he was a seven-year senior adviser to the Minister of Energy and Minerals of Algeria. Previously serving as a member of the Executive Board of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, he also chaired the high-level working group on the long-term strategy of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, a member of the OPEC Board of Governors since 2015 and Chairman of the Audit Committee. In 2016, he chaired the high-level committee of the Algiers Accord which paved the way for the historic Declaration of Cooperation in December 2016, creating an alliance of OPEC and non-OPEC producers. He was also a member of the Executive Board of the International Energy Forum and chaired in 2016 prior to the fifteenth ministerial meeting of the International Energy Forum. In the previous decade, Engineer Hamel joined OPEC Secretariat in Vienna in 2002, where he worked for 12 years, Director of the Energy Studies Department and then as Senior Adviser to the Secretary-General. Engineer Hamel graduated from two engineering schools: the Polytechnic Institute of Paris and the Paris School of Mines.