Gas exporting states agree Qatar-based ‘gas OPEC’

“A new organisation has been born today…. The charter has been agreed. The headquarters will be in Qatar,” Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said after the meeting.

The forum groups Russia, the world’s biggest gas producer, with other gas-rich states such as Iran and Qatar and a dozen other gas-exporting countries.


The GECF had been dreamt up at a meeting in Tehran in 2001 and ministers have met annually since then. But this was the first time the organisation’s basic rules have been agreed and a headquarters established.

The Qatari capital Doha beat off competition from Putin’s home city of Saint Petersburg and Tehran to host the headquarters.

…The forum groups Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Equatorial Guinea became a full member of the forum at the meeting, while Kazakhstan was granted observer status. Norway also attended the meeting as an observer.

Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela and Algeria between them control nearly two-thirds of the world’s gas reserves and account for 42 percent of its production.

AFP