Hon. Eng. Karim Badawi is Egypt’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, appointed on 3 July 2024. His ministry oversees oil and gas exploration and production, refining and petrochemicals, fuel and gas supply for the domestic market and power generation, and the development of Egypt’s mining sector, as the country works to strengthen its role as a regional energy hub linking Eastern Mediterranean gas resources to wider markets.

Badawi earned a BSc (1995) and an MSc (1998) in Mechanical Engineering from the American University in Cairo and an MBA from Erasmus University in the Netherlands (2008). He joined Schlumberger, now SLB, as a field engineer in 1996 and spent more than 27 years with the company in countries including Egypt, the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, with experience spanning engineering and upstream operations, marketing, training, information technology and human resources.

His senior positions included Managing Director of Schlumberger Egypt, Sudan and East Mediterranean, Enterprise Digital Performance Director at SLB’s global headquarters in Houston and, from 2023, Director of New Energy for SLB Middle East and North Africa, covering carbon solutions, geothermal energy, critical minerals, energy storage and hydrogen. According to the ministry, he took part in establishing the Egypt Upstream Gateway, launched in 2021 to facilitate investment and digitise international bid rounds, and in SLB’s work as a technology partner on the Zohr gas field development.

As minister, Badawi has prioritised securing domestic energy supplies, restoring growth in oil and gas production through exploration and new investment, raising refinery utilisation, expanding petrochemicals and mining, and rebuilding investor confidence. In June 2026 the ministry announced that arrears owed to foreign oil and gas partners, which stood at about US$6.1 billion in June 2024, had been fully cleared.