DOHA, Nov 15, (Agencies): Leaders of the world’s biggest gas suppliers ended their first summit Tuesday by reiterating the need for a fair gas price while Iran, whose president was absent, warned that Western taxation will derail the energy market. The 12-member Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) expressed in a declaration they issued after the one-day summit “the need to reach a fair price for natural gas based on gas to oil ... prices indexation.”

The declaration said the fair price is necessary to achieve convergence between prices of crude oil and natural gas and end disparities. The declaration said GECF members “recognise the importance of long-term gas contracts to achieve a balanced risk sharing mechanism between producers and consumers.” GECF, whose members hold just under 70 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves, also called for enhancing cooperation between member states and with consumers, especially in the field of technology. Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani opened the summit by complaining about disparities between oil and gas prices despite the rise in gas consumption in recent years.

Discrepancies
“It is illogical that discrepancies between oil prices and gas prices increase in favour of the first,” said Sheikh Hamad, who added that he does not call for controlling production to influence prices.
Egyptian Petroleum Minister Abdullah Ghorab, who represented his country, said a fair price “is the cornerstone for developing the gas industry.”
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and the leader of Libya’s National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, were among those attending the one-day summit.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had been expected to represent the Islamic republic “wanted to be here but could not come,” his representative, Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi, told the summit.

Qasemi termed the meeting “a turning point in the history of the natural gas industry,” but blasted taxes against energy exports by Western consumers.
Any taxation by consumer countries “will derail the energy market,” warned Qasemi who also said the falling dollar has “negatively affected the world economy.”
Besides Oman which was admitted Sunday, the GECF also comprises Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.
Kazakhstan, Norway and the Netherlands are observers.
Russia is the world’s largest gas producer and sits on 30 percent of global reserves, while Qatar is the largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter with a production capacity of 77 million tonnes a year.

Shortfalls
Meanwhile, Germany’s decision to shut its nuclear power plants will drive rising European demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) as energy shortfalls emerge in the coming years, an executive with Qatari producer Rasgas said on Tuesday.
“We think LNG demand in Europe will continue to grow, especially with the nuclear shutdowns in Germany,” Rasgas marketing and shipping executive Khalid Sultan Al-Kuwari said at an LNG industry event in Rome.
“From our perspective, we remain committed to (supplying) Europe,” he said.
Germany’s voluntary exit from atomic energy has not yet impacted demand for gas, while Japan’s enforced withdrawal since the earthquake and tsunami in March has had profound consequences for global LNG demand.
Spot prices have rocketed more than 50 percent since Japan closed a number of nuclear plants and shifted to gas, cutting off some supplies to Europe, where ample pipeline supplies and an economic slowdown have cut demand by about 7 percent from last year’s level.
Al-Kuwari indicated that Asian customers would take top priority, however.

“India and China are seeing rising demand, while in Korea and Taiwan demand has rebounded from 2008 recession levels,” he said.
India, the producer’s biggest long-term customers by volume, consumed 29 percent more LNG in the first half of the year compared with the previous period, he said.
“And we expect double 2008 demand by 2015,” he added.
The world’s biggest LNG exporter said its moratorium on expanding production will remain pending a review in 2014.
In related news, Qatar is not considering any reduction in LNG supplies to Europe, its energy minister said on Tuesday.
“As you may know the maturity of our contracts is mainly long-term, and we act as a responsible supplier,” said Energy Minister Mohammed al-Sada.
The comment followed a statement by Russia’s energy minister that Qatar would not increase exports to Europe and would focus on Asian markets instead.

Also:
DOHA: OPEC will be able to work well together as long as there is ‘no outside influence’, Iran’s OPEC governor warned on Tuesday, ahead of next month’s meeting of the oil producer group. June’s gathering collapsed in acrimony without a deal.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, source of more than a third of the world’s oil, meets on Dec 14 in Vienna.
In June, Iran successfully opposed a move led by top exporter Saudi Arabia to raise OPEC quotas to meet a shortfall in supplies from Libya.
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf OPEC allies raised production anyway after the meeting — a move criticised by price hawk Iran.

“We will study the latest market situation at the time of the meeting,” Iran’s OPEC Governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an energy event in the Qatari capital Doha.
When asked whether there would be a repeat of issues seen in June, Khatibi said: “People who are informed know that these problems enter the organisation from outside of it. Before the (June) meeting a number of officials of consumer countries demanded it to increase production. I believe if there are no pressures from outside, we have no problem within the organisation.”
Khatibi did not say which OPEC members may have been influenced by outside pressure, but Iran often accuses oil heavyweight Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab crude exporters - all close allies of its arch-foe the United States — of following Western policies.
OPEC expects world oil supplies to remain ample during the northern hemisphere winter and keep a lid on oil prices, indicating the producer group is unlikely to make major changes to output at a meeting next month.
Iran is planning to persuade OPEC member countries that raised output in response to the Libyan crisis earlier this year to return production levels back to where they were before, the Iranian Oil Ministry said last week.

But Khalili said it was too early to decide whether Iran will propose a production cut at the upcoming OPEC meeting.
“We still have to study the market situation, it is only afterwards we can say (what we will propose),” he said. “We can never decide in advance.”
Asked about a diplomatic row between Iran and Saudi Arabia, triggered by allegations over a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Khatibi said: “OPEC is an economic organisation, not a political one. If you look at the past when OPEC members were at times in war, they held meetings and held decisions.”
He was apparently referring to the 1980-88 war between OPEC members Iran and Iraq.