Aleem Khan

The Gas Ex­port­ing Coun­tries Fo­rum (GECF), of which T&T is one of 13 mem­bers, at its Sec­ond Gas Sum­mit in Moscow, agreed to "en­hance glob­al scale co­or­di­na­tion to pro­tect the in­ter­est of GECF," the group said in a re­lease at the end of the sum­mit Mon­day.

The Gas Sum­mit, which con­vened in the Krem­lin Palace of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, was host­ed by Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, and at­tend­ed by Al­ge­ria, Bo­livia, Egypt, Equa­to­r­i­al Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nige­ria, Oman, Qatar, Rus­sia, T&T, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and Venezuela, as well as Iraq, the Nether­lands, and Nor­way as ob­servers.T&T was rep­re­sent­ed by En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Sel­wyn Lash­ley.

Pres­i­dent Putin opened the sum­mit and "gave an overview of the gas mar­ket as well as out­lined the chal­lenges fac­ing the GECF, and it's mem­ber-states," but of­fered no de­tails."The Heads of State and gov­ern­ment, and high lev­el rep­re­sen­ta­tives, ex­changed views on the re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the in­ter­na­tion­al gas mar­ket and oth­er rel­e­vant key is­sues in the glob­al nat­ur­al gas mar­ket," the re­lease said.

The out­come of the sum­mit was the Moscow De­c­la­ra­tion, in which mem­ber coun­tries "unan­i­mous­ly af­firmed to strength­en GECF, en­hance glob­al scale co-or­di­na­tion to pro­tect the in­ter­est of GECF, pre­serve prin­ci­ples of in­ter­na­tion­al trade as well as up­hold the fun­da­men­tal role of long-term gas con­tracts and con­tin­ue to sup­port gas pric­ing based on oil/oil prod­ucts in­dex­a­tion," the re­lease said.

They al­so "com­mit­ted to fos­ter the con­sis­tent growth of nat­ur­al gas us­age, pro­mote the ex­pan­sion of nat­ur­al gas util­i­sa­tion in dif­fer­ent sec­tors, and en­cour­age GECF di­a­logue with all mar­ket play­ers and stake­hold­ers, to pro­mote gas as a dri­ver for en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly eco­nom­ic growth and so­cial de­vel­op­ment."The Moscow De­c­la­ra­tion sets the roadmap for the GECF mem­ber coun­tries to col­lab­o­rate and co-op­er­ate in the de­vel­op­ment and use of their nat­ur­al gas re­sources with all stake­hold­ers in the sec­tor.

The Sec­ond Gas Sum­mit comes two years af­ter the First Gas Sum­mit in 2011, Do­ha, Qatar. The re­lease cit­ed this as "a tes­ti­mo­ny to the ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment of GECF mem­ber coun­tries to leg­is­late on key is­sues in the nat­ur­al gas sec­tor at the high­est lev­el of gov­ern­ment."

Lead­ing up to the sum­mit, the GECF had two high-lev­el meet­ings in Moscow to fi­nalise arrange­ments for the sum­mit. The first was the Fourth Meet­ing of High-Lev­el Ad Hoc Group for the Sec­ond Gas Sum­mit Chaired by IIya Galkin, ex­ec­u­tive board mem­ber of Rus­sia.

The sec­ond was an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Min­is­te­r­i­al Meet­ing Chaired by Alexan­der No­vak, min­is­ter of en­er­gy in the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. At that meet­ing, the min­is­ters ap­proved the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic of Iran as the venue for the Third GECF Gas Sum­mit. The of­fi­cial date is to be an­nounced lat­er.