Ibrahim Al-Muhanna is a member of the board of directors of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and has had a distinguished career in academia and public service. From 1989 to 2017 he served as advisor to the minister of energy, industry, and mineral resources of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In addition, he was a member of a small team that established an independent research and information center in Saudi Arabia that led to the creation of the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center in 2010.

Al-Muhanna retired from the ministry in 2017 and established a new Riyadh-based energy consulting firm, Saudi Energy Consultants. Throughout his career, Al-Muhanna has written, in both Arabic and English, on a wide range of energy, economic, political, and communications issues for news and academic journals. Al-Muhanna has a PhD in international relations from American University in Washington, DC.