Participants in the first ministerial meeting in Tehran of major natural gas-producers do not feel the urgency of establishment of an organization like OPEC in gas sector.

The oil ministers from Iran, Algeria, Qatar and Oman and high ranking officials of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria and Russia and ambassadors of Norway and Turkmenistan were present in the meeting. They were unanimous on the target of the meeting to be exchange of views on the market issues and creation of cooperation between natural gas producers and consumers. The participants in the meeting were not willing to establish an organization of the major gas exporting countries like OPEC, that involves several exporting countries, because they seemed to prefer a more liberal and unrestricted operation in the gas market. The truth is that the objective of establishment of OPEC forty years ago was safeguarding the interests and resources of the major oil producing and exporting countries against the Western companies. Forty years ago, oil producing countries felt that their interests were endangered and demanded absolute sovereignty on their resources and using the foreign exchange revenues for structuring their economies. Qatar minister of energy and industry on the necessity of establishment of an organization similar to OPEC in gas sector said "We have not met here to create such organization. Oil and gas are essentially different because oil contracts are often short-termed while the opposite is true for gas". The meeting of the major gas exporting countries was held at a time when gas is known to be the supreme fuel in the world energy basket and its share in the basket is increasing daily.