Christof Rühl Keynote Speaker

Christof Rühl is an internationally renowned economist, specializing in macroeconomics and energy economics. He has a wide array of experience having worked in business, policy, and academia. His most recent commercial expertise is in energy, specifically oil and gas, and in asset allocation, focusing on global macroeconomic and geopolitical trends. Christof Rühl has twenty years of experience in senior roles at some of the world’s largest companies.

Christof is currently a Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. In parallel, he was a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School (2019-21). From 2014-19 he served as the Global Head of Research at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). Here, he founded and managed ADIA’s first centralized research team, responsible for providing global economic, energy, and geopolitical analysis across asset classes.

Previously, Christof Rühl was Group Chief Economist and Vice President of BP plc (2005-14). He was widely known for his significant contributions to the global debate on energy, climate change, and the various links between energy and economic development. In addition to BP’s annual flagship report, Statistical Review of World Energy, he created and managed the industry’s first regular Energy Outlook. He was prescient in his prediction that the shale gas and oil boom would transform the US from the world’s largest oil importer to energy self-sufficiency in just a year, with dramatic consequences for the global economy and geopolitics. This prediction has become today’s reality.

Christof joined BP from the world of global economic policy. He  served at the World Bank (1998 – 2005), including as the Bank’s Chief Economist in Russia and Brazil. Before this, he was at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD, 1996-98).

He started his career in academia, first as a Research Associate in Germany; and from 1991-96, as an Assistant Professor in Economics at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).

Christof Rühl’s research activity is concentrated on the triangle of energy markets, geopolitics, and the global economy. He serves as a global advisor and board director to companies in energy, finance, and private equity all over the world. He is widely published in his fields, and a sought-after authority and lecturer on worldwide energy security and policy. Christof is a German national.