The Right Touch; Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi is the Greenspan of energy, the world's most listened-to muse.

Byline: Stephen Glain

Quick, name a leader whose every word can roil or calm the markets from Tokyo to Wall Street. Now that U.S. central bank boss Alan Greenspan is retired, and his successor is still settling in, that description may best apply to Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi, who has in fact been described as the Greenspan of oil. "Naimi chooses his words carefully because he realizes the impact they have," says Frank Verrastro, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "He knows the industry intimately. He knows whom to talk with to get things done."

Naimi is, in effect, the world's central banker of oil, chief lord of its oil cartel and guardian of its largest oil reserves. Though deliberately low profile, Naimi is widely regarded as the most influential Saudi oil minister, ever. Where the Fed uses the U.S. money supply to stabilize world markets, the Saudis use vast oil reserves. When Hurricane Katrina cut U.S. refining capacity, Naimi soothed markets by quickly declaring that Saudi Arabia would make up the shortfall. In March 2003, with war raging in Iraq, Riyadh announced it was ready to tap its excess capacity of 2 million barrels per day to ensure a steady supply.

A Stanford grad in geology who jogs every morning, Naimi works easily with Westerners, but is as fiercely independent as any central banker. He has built up Saudi oil exploration skills in a country once dependent on American or European expertise. "Those oil wells are his babies, and he treats them that way," says Verrastro. Under King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz, he has become the monarch's top economic adviser. Where Greenspan taught even soft-money Democrats to embrace stable prices, Naimi is the first leader of OPEC to persuade its members that stable oil prices benefit them, too.

Born to a poor family, he was raised among Aramco tanker trucks and drilling rigs. As a 15-year old clerk, according to Aramco lore, he vowed he would one day take the helm, which he did in 1984. When he became Oil minister in 1995, OPEC was in trouble. Members were defying production caps as oil prices sagged. "Naimi's performance has been fantastic," says Leonardo Maugeri, a senior vice president of Italian energy giant ENI. "Few people know how difficult it is to impose discipline over OPEC, and he did it."

Of course oil prices have since risen sharply--but in contrast to previous oil shocks, few blame a greedy OPEC. Naimi is seen as a trustworthy and authoritative voice on the real state of the oil supply. In April 2004, with oil prices nearing $40 a barrel, Naimi began voicing concerns about supply bottlenecks at the "downstream," or refining end of oil production. So did Greenspan. Their remarks intensified a buying spree of shares in oil refiners.

Naimi ...