Gas: Iran turns up the heat

So what’s the problem? First, Moscow wanted to see that alarm bells didn’t ring in Western capitals, especially when a top-level European Union delegation was due to visit Moscow. In the West, sweat breaks out at the very mention of “cartel”, invoking images of production quotas, price rigging, and so on. Second, Moscow knows that a “gas OPEC” is still a decade away from realization, given the regional structure of the market, absence of a floating gas price (gas is mostly price-indexed to petroleum), double dependency resulting from the transportation through pipelines (gas-carrier ships are nowhere near meeting the needs of transportation) and the prevalence of long-term contracts between the supplier and the consumer, and, of course, the absence of a developed gas-liquefaction infrastructure.

Third, a masterly stroke in ambiguity doesn’t do Russian interests any harm.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has visualized that it is a matter of time before a “gas OPEC” takes shape. On the sidelines of the last NATO summit, in Latvia in November, there were calls for the formation of a “gas NATO” that is geared to safeguarding the energy security of Western consumer countries.

Iran has shown extraordinary flexibility by lowering its original price offer by 30%. The geopolitics of energy security has seldom sailed into view with such elan.

Asia Times