BLBG: Crude Oil Is Little Changed at $102.76 a Barrel in N.Y., Reversing Decline
Russia, holder of the world’s biggest gas reserves and the largest exporter to Europe, said the Gas Exporting Countries Forum won’t emulate OPEC by imposing production quotas on members.
The forum “is not OPEC,” Anatoly Yonovsky, Russia’s deputy oil minister, told reporters in Cairo before the 11- member group meets tomorrow. “I think it won’t ever be.”
Gas and oil markets are “quite different” and no members have attempted to impose production quotas in the same manner as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, he said.
The Gas Forum, which brings together some of the world’s biggest exporters in the same way OPEC groups oil producers, can’t control global production or prices for the next five or 10 years because most supply contracts are long-term, Secretary- General Leonid Bokhanovsky said in December.
The forum’s members are Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad & Tobago and Venezuela. Kazakhstan, the Netherlands and Norway have observer status. Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei may join as members, and the group may talk with Australia, Turkmenistan and Canada about becoming observers, Bokhanovsky said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Tuttle in Doha at rtuttle@bloomberg.net; Ben Farey in London at bfarey@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net
