Russia and Iran Discuss A Cartel For Natural Gas

The Wall Street Journal ^ | February 2, 2007 | RUSSELL GOLD and GREGORY L. WHITE

[MinorityRepublican]

Russia and Iran -- which hold nearly half the world's natural-gas reserves -- are talking about creating an OPEC-like organization for gas, a move that has the potential to unsettle energy markets and redraw geopolitical alignments.

Gas accounts for a growing share of global energy use, but the nations that produce most of it don't work together to influence markets. That's a stark contrast to the oil market, in which members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries manage output to keep prices at levels they favor.

During his annual news conference in the Kremlin yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said "a gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it." His comment comes days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly called on a visiting Kremlin official to establish a group of natural-gas producers similar to OPEC. Russia and Iran are the world's largest and second-largest holders of gas reserves, respectively.

While there are several reasons why a gas cartel isn't likely to work as well as OPEC has managed the oil markets, the talk has alarmed big gas consumers, particularly in Europe, which gets a quarter of its gas from Russia. A cartel would be less menacing economically in the short-term to the U.S., which still gets most of its gas within North America.

Still, over time, the market is becoming more internationally flexible as shipments of liquefied natural gas rise. U.S. imports of LNG have more than doubled since 2002, though they still account for a small fraction of gas consumption here. Other Western countries are seeing demand for the clean-burning fuel climb even as their home-grown supply of gas declines. These shifts have turned gas in the last few years from a humdrum commodity into a prized fuel increasingly subject to geopolitical spats.