By RIA Novosti
Moscow : Russia and other major natural gas exporters could announce a cartel similar to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries or OPEC in Moscow in June, a Russian business daily said Thursday.
However, the gas cartel might not immediately achieve a comparable level of global influence as enjoyed by the OPEC, following the opposition of the US and the European Union, the Kommersant newspaper reported citing analysts.
Members of the Gas Exporting Countries’ Forum (GECF), which control 73 percent of the world’s gas reserves and 42 percent of total production, held a session in Egypt Wednesday and plan to discuss a charter of the new international organization based on the principles guiding OPEC at its next session in June, the daily said.
The draft charter was proposed last year by Iran, which has the world’s second largest gas reserves and is in need of new export markets, the paper said.
Unlike the oil market, there is currently no price coordination in gas dealings. Prices are individually negotiated for five years per contract between producers and consumers. Membership in a gas cartel would give exporters greater clout and a stronger presence on Asian and European markets.
Russia earlier had criticised Iran’s draft over negative political consequences it could trigger, the paper said, citing government sources.
The industry and energy ministries of Russia made changes to the draft charter and submitted it for coordination with other ministries in November after a GECF session in Doha, Qatar, in late October.
Gas producers plan to finally coordinate their positions on the charter in Moscow, which experts quoted by Kommersant warn could trigger fresh tensions in relations between Russia and the United States.
“The exporters will have to take an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, way to the gradual consolidation of efforts,” Valery Nesterov, an analyst with the Troika Dialog investment told the newspaper.
Washington has labelled it as the brainchild of some of the world’s least democratic countries and as a security threat and said it was designed for “extortion”. The founding fathers of the ‘gas OPEC’ would be Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela and Algeria.
The GECF was set up in 2001 without any charter, clear membership structure or representation in any country.
Its permanent participants included Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Norway is an observer.