OREANDA-NEWS. June 23, 2010. The Gazprom headquarters hosted today a working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Company’s Management Committee and Leonid Bokhanovsky, Secretary General of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF).

The meeting addressed the issues of GECF’s strategic development and, in particular, appreciated the consolidated approach of the Forum’s participants to the global gas market stabilization, as well as to non-admission of the unjustified competition between long-term and short-term gas supplies.

The parties looked at the prospects for providing GECF membership to those countries which are potentially interested in the Forum activities.

“Progress is noticeable in the GECF activities. We may say that the ideological center of GECF has been shaped and started operating,” noted Alexey Miller.

Alexey Miller and Leonid Bokhanovsky underlined that increased reliability of Russian gas transit and export routes diversification ensuring a direct connection between Russia and Europe were especially significant in terms of energy safety of the continent.
Background

The Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) was set up in 2001 in Teheran. The Forum was transformed into an international organization and was assigned the relevant legal status at the 7th GECF Ministerial Meeting of December 2008 held in Moscow. The GECF is headquartered in Doha (Qatar). In December 2009 Leonid Bokhanovsky, a representative from the Russian Federation, was elected the Forum’s Secretary General. Nowadays, the Forum’s participants are Algeria, Bolivia, Venezuela, Egypt, Iran, Qatar, Libya, Nigeria, the Russian Federation, Equatorial Guinea, Trinidad & Tobago, as well as Norway and Kazakhstan as observers.