Doha: The 24th Ministerial Meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) was held yesterday in Cairo. HE Tarek El Molla, Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources of Egypt chaired the meeting in his capacity as President of the GECF Ministerial Meeting for 2022.
The meeting was attended by the energy ministers and top officials from Members Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela and from Observers Angola, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Malaysia, Mozambique and the UAE. The Minister in charge of energy of Papua New Guinea attended the meeting as a guest, as well as a high-level official from Mauritania.
In his opening remarks, HE Minister El Molla said: “We are convening at a critical time when global efforts are dedicated towards achieving the energy trilemma for security, sustainability and affordability. As the cleanest hydrocarbon fuel, natural gas is seen as the perfect solution that strikes the right balance and will continue to play a key role in the future energy mix. Egypt is eager to work closely with all GECF members to develop applicable and realistic initiatives that ensure energy security and a just energy transition pathway.”
The Ministerial Meeting emphasised the GECF objective of supporting the permanent sovereignty of its member countries over their natural resources and their ability to independently plan and manage the sustainable, efficient, and environmentally conscious development, use, and conservation of natural gas resources for the benefit of their people, including through cooperation with neighbouring countries without restrictions. It also reiterated the importance of cooperation and coordination between Member Countries and reaffirmed its support for genuine and strengthened dialogue between producers, consumers, and other relevant stakeholders with the objective to ensure the security of demand and the security of supply, as well as open, transparent, unhindered, and non-discriminatory gas markets.
The Ministerial Meeting discussed at length the multidimensional crisis that encompasses the economy, energy, trade, health, environment, and geopolitics. It noted with concern the rising risks stemming from gloomy economic prospects, inflation unseen in decades, tightening financial conditions, and supply-chain disruptions. The Meeting underscored that natural gas markets are undergoing dramatic changes in terms of physical flows, market functioning, contractual arrangements, and investment. It observed that while gas hubs experience extreme volatility, long-term gas contract prices are more stable and predictable. It expressed great concern with regard to the attempts to alter the price discovery and risk management functions of markets, and to impose politically-driven price caps. It underlined that such artificial intervention in market functioning can only aggravate market tightness, discourage investment, and be detrimental to producers and consumers alike.
The Meeting reaffirmed that natural gas, the cleanest burning hydrocarbon, will play a pivotal role in sustainable development and in a just and inclusive energy transition. It constitutes a key lever to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the Paris Agreement’s long-term objectives.
The Meeting expressed its support for the African countries in their fight for alleviating energy poverty, in particular through unhindered access to financial resources as well as improved energy security with the view to bring prosperity to their people. It called for cooperation, consistent with UN SDG 7, and the overarching principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in the Paris Agreement, to ensure sufficient investments and financing in all segments of the value chain on the African continent, as well as to provide balanced risk sharing between producers and consumers for natural gas to support the least developed and developing countries in their fight to improve food security and alleviate energy poverty to ensure just and inclusive energy transition that leaves no one behind.
They re-emphasised the crucial need for security of supply and demand, and for collaboration to protect critical gas infrastructure and enhance resilience to natural disasters, technological incidents, and man-made threats, such as malicious use of information and communication technologies. The Meeting emphasised the importance of critical energy infrastructure for the free flow of gas and stable functioning of global gas markets and condemns any deliberate attacks to damage such infrastructure.
