Gas Exporting Countries Forum

History

The GECF was established in Tehran, Iran, in 2001. Until the seventh ministerial meeting in Moscow, Russia, it operated without charter and fixed membership structure. The seventh ministerial meeting, held on 23 December 2008 in Moscow, adapted the organization's charter. At the same time, it was decided to set up an Executive Office and a Secretariat in Doha, Qatar. On the eighth ministerial meeting in June 2009, energy minister of Qatar Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah was elected as the chairman (president) of the GECF and Algerian energy minister Chakib Khelil was elected as vice-chairman. On the ninth ministerial meeting in December 2009, the vice-president of Russian energy engineering and construction company Stroytransgaz Leonid Bokhanovsky was elected as Secretary-General. He was re-elected at the thirteenth ministerial meeting in December 2011. In 2013, GECF ministers elected Iran’s candidate Mohammad-Hossein Adeli, a former head of central bank and diplomat, as the new Secretary-General of the forum for the next two years.

Objectives

The objectives of the GECF are:

Organisational structure

The highest body of the GECF is a ministerial meeting. In between of ministerial meetings, the work is organized through the Secretariat, headquartered in Doha, Qatar. The 2009 chairman of the GECF was Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah and the vice chairman was Chakib Khelil. The Secretary-General is Leonid Bokhanovsky.

Ministerial meetings

The GECF has had ministerial meetings since 2001:

Summits

Holding the GECF's summit was decided at the 10th ministerial meeting in Oran in 2010. The first GECF's summit was held in Doha on 15 November 2011, under patronage of Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, following the thirteenth ministerial meeting held at the same place on 13 November 2011. Two main issues which were discussed at the summit, were natural gas prices and a common approach to the natural gas market. It was agreed on the summit that the price of gas used to generate electricity is too low and the gap between prices for gas and crude oil need to be narrowed. The linking of gas prices to the oil price was considered. However, the GECF will not set output limits for its members. The final communique issued was the Doha Declaration, which read that GECF members "recognized the importance of long-term gas contracts to achieve a balanced risk sharing mechanism between producers and consumers" and "acknowledge the need to reach a fair price for natural gas based on gas to oil/oil products prices indexation with the objective of an oil and gas price convergence ..." Russian president Dmitry Medvedev made a statement calling the summit "an important event, which marked a new stage in the development of the global energy sector and the gas sector in particular."

Membership

The members are Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela. Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Iraq, Oman, Peru, Azerbaijan and Norway are observers. Other countries like Turkmenistan, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen have participated at different meetings. Yemen and Angola are interested to become members of the organisation. The full membership will be granted by the approval of at least three quarters of all members.

Gas OPEC

Since the establishment of the GECF in 2001 there has always been speculation that some of the world's largest producers of natural gas, in particular Russia and Iran, intend to create a gas cartel equivalent to OPEC which would set quotas and prices. The idea of a gas OPEC was first floated by then Russian President Vladimir Putin and backed by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev in 2002. In May 2006 Gazprom deputy chairman Alexander Medvedev threatened that Russia would create "an alliance of gas suppliers that will be more influential than OPEC" if Russia did not get its way in energy negotiations with Europe. Iranian officials have explicitly expressed strong support for a gas cartel and held official talks with Russia. Cartel speculation was again raised when the ministers met on 9 April 2007. The 6th Ministerial Meeting of the GECF established an expert group, chaired by Russia, to study how to strengthen the GECF. According to the Algerian Energy and Mines Minister Chakib Khelil, this mean that in the long term the GECF will move toward becoming a gas OPEC. On 11 December 2009, Russia's Energy Minister Sergey Shmatko stated: "Today we can speak about gas OPEC as a fully fledged international organization. By a unanimous decision a Russian national was elected its secretary general. This is to show that member countries expect Russia to use its political weight to promote it."

Creation of the "Gas OPEC" was one of the topics of the first GECF's summit. However, some GECF's members are concerned over the gas exports to be politicized.