Gas Exporting Countries Forum

The regular participants of the GECF include ^[1] :

•   Algeria
•   Bolivia
•   Venezuela
•   Egypt
•   Iran
•   Qatar
•   Libya
•   Nigeria
•   Russia
•   United Arab Emirates (since 2012)
•   Trinidad and Tobago
•   Equatorial Guinea

Observers:

•   Angola
•   Azerbaijan
•   Iraq
•   Kazakhstan
•   Norway
•   Oman
•   Peru

Representatives of Turkmenistan , Brunei , Indonesia , Malaysia , and Yemen also took part in some ministerial meetings. It was reported that negotiations were conducted with Canada and Australia on their entry into the GECF, and the issue of Kazakhstan and Norway moving from observer status to full member status was also discussed. In addition, the Netherlands had observer status for some time ^[2] .

Forum Goals:

• development of mutual understanding, approval of the dialogue between producers , consumers , governments and energy- related industries ;
• creating a base for research and exchange of experience ;
• creating a sustainable and transparent energy market.

The forum had no statute until the seventh ministerial meeting, which took place on December 23, 2008 in Moscow ^[3] .

V. Putin proposed giving the GECF the status of an organization: adopt a charter and create a headquarters ^[4] . He also proposed to place the headquarters in St. Petersburg and said that Russia was ready to endow the organization with diplomatic status and assume the costs of maintaining the headquarters ^[5] . However, on the same day, it was decided that the organization’s headquarters would be located in Doha ^[6] .

General Secretaries

Ministerial meetings

The following ministerial-level meetings were held within the framework of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum:

The sixth meeting was to be held in Caracas in 2006 , but was later moved to Doha , where it took place on April 9, 2007 . The seventh meeting took place on December 23, 2008 in Moscow. The eighth and ninth meetings were held in Doha, where the GECF headquarters were organized ^[7] . On April 19, 2010, the tenth ministerial session of the GECF was held in Oran ( Algeria ). The energy ministers of 11 countries participated: Algeria , Bolivia , Venezuela , Egypt , Qatar , Nigeria , Russia , Trinidad and Tobago , Equatorial Guinea , Iran and Libya , and representatives from the Netherlands and Norway and Kazakhstan attended. The proposal to reduce gas supplies to world markets was not supported by Russia and Qatar. The GECF expressed its intention to link the spot prices to oil prices and to prevent prices from falling due to a decrease in demand for fuel due to the global crisis and the development of shale gas production . It was decided to form a global gas databank Global Gas Initiative by analogy with the Joint Oil Data Initiative ^[8] and hold a gas summit in 2011 ^[9] .

Summits

As part of the GECF, summits are held with the participation of heads of state.

“Gas OPEC ” is a code name for a possible cartel of natural gas producing countries, well-established among Russian and foreign journalists. Anyway, the very name “Gas OPEC” already contradicts the essence of such an organization, since the mechanism for trading natural gas differs in principle from oil trading. Experts note that the characteristics of the market generally make it extremely difficult to regulate gas prices ^[10] .

For the first time, Vladimir Putin spoke at the meeting with Saparmurat Niyazov in 2002 about the creation of a gas cartel similar to OPEC. But this proposal was not supported by Turkmenistan ^[11] .

Ideas about creating such an organization reappeared in 2005 . In April 2005, at the 5th ministerial meeting of gas exporting countries in Port-of-Spain, forum participants tried to work out mechanisms that would allow for a more equitable gas price. The idea of ​​creating a special organization with a focal point in Doha was put forward. However, due to disagreements of the participants as well as certain pressure from the United States and the European Union, they began to forget about this idea.

On January 29, 2007, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei again spoke of the need to create a gas union and during a meeting with the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Igor Ivanov officially proposed Russia to create a cartel ^[12] . Vladimir Putin did not respond to this proposal, but during his visit to the Middle East he agreed with the Emir of Qatar on the coordination of actions in the gas sector. On the same day, it was announced that Russia had not abandoned the idea of ​​creating an international organization of natural gas exporters.

At the 6th ministerial meeting of gas exporting countries, which took place on April 9, 2007 in Doha, it was not possible to finally resolve the issue of creating a cartel.

On October 21, 2008, at a meeting in Tehran, the head of Gazprom , Alexei Miller, and the ministers of oil and energy of Iran and Qatar announced the creation of a gas troika. On November 18, the final design of the creation of the organization was planned ^[13] .

At the ministerial meeting in 2008, where V. Putin proposed to give the GECF the status of organization, Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said that there is an opportunity to build on the basis of the forum "a solid organization based on the same principles that gave rise to OPEC." This organization should ensure the establishment of a fair price for gas ^[14] . However, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Gazprom , Alexander Medvedev, said that the forum is “gas non-OPEC”, and there is no direct link between gas prices and the association of exporters of this resource into an organization ^[15] .

December 9, 2009, Stroitransgaz Vice President Leonid Bokhanovsky was elected Secretary General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), whose candidacy was nominated for a vote from Russia ^[16] . On November 13, 2011, Leonid Bokhanovsky was re-elected for a new term as the General Secretary of the Forum. ^[17]

In 2012, the Forum was held in Equatorial Guinea. The main trend of discussions was the protection of high gas prices by suppliers and the binding formula of long-term contracts to oil prices, since such a formula brings winnings to both producers and consumers: it allows you to recoup capital-intensive projects and provides a long-term supply guarantee, the forum participants admitted. Forum participants agreed with the idea of ​​the Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation Alexander Novak that spot contracts are not conducive to long-term investments, so long-term contracts will be the right choice. ^[18]

The last Forum was held in Moscow on July 1-2, 2013, one of the co-chairs of which was the Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation Alexander Novak. ^[nineteen]

Reactions of other countries

According to Western politicians, the creation of such a cartel will allow Russia to establish even tighter control over energy consumption in European countries . As Anatoly Dmitrievsky , Director of the Institute for Oil and Gas Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, noted, “a negative reaction to the creation of a gas cartel can only come from those politicians in the West who do not understand the problem and do not know the features of the functioning of this market” ^[20] .

United States

The US House of Representatives appealed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with a letter regarding the creation of a gas OPEC. In it, Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Ileana Ros-Letinen demands to inform the Russian government that “the creation of a gas cartel will be considered as a deliberate threat to the United States, and the“ gas OPEC ”itself is nothing but a global organization for extortion and racketeering” ^[21] .

• Energy superpower

• GECF official website