The world's top natural gas producers meeting in the Gulf state of Qatar have agreed to strengthen their emergent organization and work together to push up tumbling prices caused by an unprecedented global gas glut. But there's still no sign that they will coalesce into a price-manipulating cartel with the market muscle of the 13-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries that the three nations with the world's three biggest reserves of gas -- Russia, Iran and Qatar -- are pushing for. Talk of a possible major gas monopoly, dubbed a "gas OPEC," has unnerved Europe, which gets much of its gas from Russia. The 27-member European Union imports 61 percent of its gas needs, 42 percent from Russia. There are concerns too that a resurgent Russia, now vying with Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil producer, is using its oil and gas exports as leverage to reassert its dominance over the states that comprised the former Soviet bloc.
But there's still no sign that they will coalesce into a price-manipulating cartel with the market muscle of the 13-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries that the three nations with the world's three biggest reserves of gas -- Russia, Iran and Qatar -- are pushing for.
Talk of a possible major gas monopoly, dubbed a "gas OPEC," has unnerved Europe, which gets much of its gas from Russia. The 27-member European Union imports 61 percent of its gas needs, 42 percent from Russia.
There are concerns too that a resurgent Russia, now vying with Saudi Arabia as the world's leading oil producer, is using its oil and gas exports as leverage to reassert its dominance over the states that comprised the former Soviet bloc.
http://www.petroleum-economist.com/default.asp?page=14&PubID=46&ISS=25529&SID=723555
