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Iranian Experts do not Believe Soon Establishment of Gas OPEC

Oil&Gas Materials 1 March 2008 14:06 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijan, Baku, 1 March /corr. Trend D.Khatinoglu / Establishing the organization of the leading gas exporting countries like OPEC is unreal, the Professor of Tehran University, former member of Economic Commission of the Iranian Parliament, Jamshid Pajuan, reported to Trend .

This week Iran's Ambassador to France, Gulamrza Ansari, said that Iran, Russia, Qatar and Algeria will hold talks in the near future with regards to establishment of a gas OPEC, Farsnews reports. The Charter of the new organization which will fully correspond to the Charter of the oil OPEC may be presented in the next meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) which will take place in Moscow in June 2008. The USA opposed the establishment of such organization. The USA considers that establishing the gas analogue of the oil OPEC will bring to problems both for producers and consumers. In addition, there are threats that it will lead to sharp increase of the gas prices.

According to Pajuan, the gas OPEC can not become a big international organization like oil OPEC. The expert said that in the best case, the gas OPEC may become a local organization.

"The clients of the gas exporting countries, especially Iran, Russia, Qatar and Algeria, are different, and establishment of an export coalition by these countries is impossible. The gas sale markets of these countries are different," he said.

According to the Prof. of Tehran University, Iran's joining the talks on establishment of the gas OPEC will present a big obstacle in creating such an organization.

"The resolutions by the UN Security Council with regards to Iran have been applied, and the international community is very sensitive to Iran from the political point of view. The gas exporting countries, especially Kuwait and Qatar, are the allies of the USA," Pajuan said.

According to other Iranian expert, Bijad Bidabad, it will be possible to establish gas OPEC only after exhaustion of the oil reserves.

The idea of establishing gas OPEC was firstly made by Iran. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) is an organization of world's leading gas producers, which was established in Tehran in 2001 . The forum doesn't have fixed membership structure, however Algeria , Bolivia , Brunei , Egypt , Equatorial Guinea , Indonesia , Iran , Malaysia , Nigeria , Qatar , Russia , Trinidad , the UAE and Venezuela could be identified as current members. Turkmenistan , Bolivia , Indonesia , Libya and Oman have participated at different ministerial meetings. Norway has status of observer.

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