Azerbaijan, Baku, Sep.29/ Trend R.Zamanov
The new Secretary General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) will be elected in the upcoming meeting of the forum in Tehran.
According to the Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, Tehran will announce its official candidate next week, the Fars News Agency reported.
Tehran will host the third summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in December.
The second summit of the GECF was held in Moscow in July.The forum is a multi-layered and an intergovernmental organization of the world's leading natural gas producers comprising Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Kazakhstan, Iraq, the Netherlands and Norway have the status of observer members.
The first GECF summit meeting was held in the Qatari capital of Doha on November 15, 2011.The GECF was founded in 2001 in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and its member states control over 70 per cent of the world's natural gas reserves, as well as over 80 per cent of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) production.
The legal establishment of the forum took place on December 2008 in Moscow, where energy ministers of the member states adopted the forum's charter and signed an intergovernmental agreement.