Senior Russian MP Says “Gas OPEC” is Necessary

Text of report by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS

Moscow, 14 February: The chairman of the State Duma committee on energy, [transport and communications,] Valeriy Yazev, thinks that it is necessary to create a coordinating structure such as a “gas OPEC”.

“I think such a structure should exist,” he told journalists today, noting that the oil OPEC’s counterpart should perform functions such as coordination of dates for starting extraction from new major deposits, coordination of transport and pricing policies, and sharing advanced technologies of the sector. “The goal is to ensure global energy security, which is in Russia’s national interests too,” Yazev said. He added that the “creation of a unified system of gas supply in Eastern Siberia is already becoming an integrating factor for the entire Eurasian continent”.

“We are already facing a cartel of consumers- the EU,” he noted.

Yazev said that the creation of such a [gas] cartel was an especially topical issue in the conditions of moving to market relations between CIS countries and Russia. “This process has been so difficult also because there are no such associations in former Soviet republics,” he noted.

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