The Gas Exporting Countries Forum ministerial meeting is to convene in Doha on December 9, Iran's representative to GECF said here on Sunday.
The Mehr News Agency quoted Mohammad-Ali Khatibi as saying that the GECF executive committee meeting will be held before the ministerial meeting, but an exact date has not yet been set.
Noting that currently the Forum has a temporary secretary general, he added that the members will select a permanent secretary general in the upcoming meeting.
"In case the ministerial meeting does not reach a consensus on a certain candidate, the secretary general will be appointed for a two-year term based on alphabetical order," he added.
The Gas Exporting Countries Forum, which has been called the 'gas OPEC', groups together some of the world's leading gas producers.
The energy ministers of the member countries attended the 7th GECF ministerial meeting in Moscow on December 23, 2008 where they approved the charter of the organization.
The GECF was established in Tehran in 2001. Until the seventh ministerial meeting in Moscow, it operated without a charter or fixed membership structure.
The GECF has agreed to establish its headquarters in Doha, Qatar, the world's biggest producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas.
Since the Moscow meeting, the members are Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela; in addition, Kazakhstan and Norway have observer status.
Gas producers face the challenge of shaping a market, as 70% of gas is sent by pipeline to regional consumers and no global benchmark price exists on an exchange.
Russia, Qatar, and Iran combined own 53.2% of the world's gas reserves. Russia has the world's largest reserves, followed by Iran, Qatar, Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia.