Qatar Gas Summit Opens with Ahmadinejad “Couldn’t Come”

The inaugural summit of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) opened in the Qatari capital on Tuesday attended by a number of world leaders, but without Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who had been slated to attend.

An Iranian official had on Friday announced Ahmadinejad's participation in the summit being held in the Doha but there was no sign of him when the forum opened on Tuesday.
Ahmadinejad "wanted to be here but could not come," Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi told the summit before reading out the president's message.

Iran's GECF representative, Mohammad Ali Khatabi, said in an interview with Iranian state television from Doha that Qasemi was attending the gas meeting on behalf of Ahmadinejad.

In an opening speech, Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani reassured gas-consuming countries of the forum's intentions.
"The interests of the producing countries will not be at the expense of consuming countries," he said.

The summit comes two days after a ministerial meeting of the 12-nation forum, whose members hold just under 70 percent of global natural gas reserves.
Among the heads of state attending Tuesday's gathering were Algerian leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Libya's National Transitional Council chief, Mustafa Abdel Jalil.

According to the GECF, the summit will focus on "long-term contracts as the basis of security for exporters and consumers of natural gas."
It will also seek ways to establish a fair gas price under a gas-to-oil indexation, with the aim of overcoming the disparity between crude oil and gas prices, organizers said.

Besides Oman which was admitted on 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.