The 8th ministerial meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) ended in Doha on Tuesday, postponing the issue of naming the new secretary general to the next meeting in October.
Iran Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari said the meeting approved the new budget bill and accepted the Netherlands as the new observer for the forum.
Representatives from Norway and Kazakhstan also attended Tuesday's ministerial meeting as observer countries.
Iran has introduced Hojattollah Ghanimifard as its candidate for the GECF secretary general post.
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.
Iran fully complying with OPEC production quota
Iran is fully complying with its crude oil production quota set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the country's oil minister said, the WSJ reported.
"What we have committed to we have done," Gholam-Hossein Nozari told reporters on the sidelines of the Tuesday's meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Qatar's capital when asked about OPEC cuts.
Nozari said Iran was presently pumping around 3.5 million to 3.6 million barrels a day of crude, in line with the country's quota.