Majid Jafar

Majid Jafar
Majid Jafar addressing the Davos Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum
Alma mater	Eton College Cambridge University, London University (SOAS) Harvard Business School
Occupation	Energy sector
Organization	Crescent Petroleum

Majid Hamid Jafar (Arabic version مجيد حميد جعفر ), born in 1976, is a UAE businessman of Iraqi origin. He is the CEO of Crescent Petroleum, the Middle East's oldest private oil and gas company, headquartered in the UAE and with offices in the UK and internationally. He is also Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Crescent Group of Companies, his family's business group, which includes interests in the energy, transportation, logistics, private equity and real estate sectors, and the Managing Director of the Board of Dana Gas (PJSC), the first regional, private sector integrated natural gas company in the Middle East, in which Crescent Petroleum is the largest shareholder. He has been named one of the world's 50 most influential Arabs by Middle East Magazine.

Crescent Petroleum began its activities in the early 1970s and is the first regional, independent, privately owned Middle Eastern petroleum company to engage in the acquisition, exploration and development of petroleum concessions; and the production and sale of crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas. Together, Crescent Petroleum and Dana Gas have invested over $1bn in the oil and gas sector in Iraq's Kurdistan region, producing over 340 million cubic feet of gas and 15,000 barrels of condensate per day, enabling almost continuous electricity in the main cities in Iraq's Kurdistan region.

Previous to joining Crescent Petroleum and the Crescent Group of companies in 2004, Jafar spent several years working at Shell with Shell International’s Exploration & Production and Gas & Power Divisions in London.

Jafar has been named as one of the 25 most powerful people in the Middle East oil and gas sector. He has also been a commentator on the oil and gas sector and energy policy and has written on the economic challenges in the Arab World, the development of the UAE and the geopolitics of oil and gas in the Caspian Region. In 2013 Jafar was elected Vice-Chairman of the Global Energy Initiative, the international NGO headquartered at UN Plaza in New York that is focused on sustainable development through tackling climate change and energy poverty across the world. He was listed among the top 100 business leaders from the Middle East and as Energy CEO of 2013 by Amwal and has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

He is a Trustee of the Arab Forum for Environment and Development (AFED) and the Iraqi Energy Institute, a member of the Young Presidents Organisation and of the Panel of Senior Advisors of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London chaired by former UK Prime Minister John Major.