• CERAWEEK 2025 | March 10-14, 2025
  • CERAWEEK
  • March 10 - 14, 2025

Christof Rühl

CGEP Columbia University and Crystol Energy

Senior Research Scholar

Christof Rühl is an internationally renowned economist, specializing in the triangle of macroeconomics, geopolitics, and energy. His skillset reflects senior positions in some of the world's best-known institutions in business, policy and academia; it includes significant commercial expertise in energy and asset allocation, policy advice, and academic research. 

Today, Christof advises companies, governments, and financial institutions globally; he is adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, New York; and was Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School (2019-21).

From 2014-19, Christof served as the Global Head of Research at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, creating and managing ADIA’s first global research team across asset classes and responsible for economic, energy and geopolitical analysis. He was Group Chief Economist and Vice President of BP plc 2005 through 2014, credited with a significant contribution to the global debate on energy, climate change, and the links between energy and economic development. 

Christof joined BP from the world of economic policy making at the World Bank (1998–2005), including as the Bank’s Chief Economist in Russia and in Brazil; and at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London (1996-98). 

He started his career in academia, first as a Research Associate in Germany, and then as an Assistant Professor in economics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Christof serves as a global advisor and board director to companies in energy, finance and private equity. He is well published and a sought-after commentator and public speaker.

Sessions With Christof Rühl

Tuesday, 12 March

  • 07:30am - 08:40am (CST) / -

    Realigning the Global Oil Order
    Panel Oil

    Russia and Saudi Arabia, two of the world’s three largest oil producers, formed an unprecedented alliance (the Vienna Alliance) in 2016 that allowed them to lead OPEC and non-OPEC producers to jointly agree to coordinated supply. The cooperation has continued, with the Alliance agreeing in December to cut supply again. What brought these two oil superpowers together after decades of failed attempts at joint supply management? What might sustain this alliance, and what could eventually pull it apart?

Friday, 15 March