TEHRAN (MEHR - Trend )
The Gas Exporting Countries Forum ministerial meeting is to convene in Doha on June 30 to introduce the proposed candidates for the secretary general position, Iran's representative to the GECF said here on Friday.
IRNA quoted Mohammad-Ali Khatibi as saying that the GECF executive committee meeting will be set up a day earlier on June 29.
"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.
Russia also ranks as the world's biggest producer of gas, followed by the U.S., Canada, Iran and Norway. Other countries that each supply at least 2% of the world's gas are Algeria, the Netherlands, Turkmenistan, the UK, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, China, Indonesia and Malaysia.