Vladimir Radyuhin
MOSCOW: Russia will cooperate with OPEC in maintaining stable oil prices in the global market, said Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday.
He told OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla Salem el-Badri, during their meeting here on Wednesday that interaction with the oil cartel was a “key area of Russia’s energy policy aimed at maintaining stable and predictable prices.” The OPEC head is on a two-day visit to Moscow to coordinate policy with Russia before an emergency session of oil-exporting countries in Vienna on Friday to discuss measures to halt plummeting prices. Mr. El-Badri said he did not ask Russia to cut oil exports, but welcomed Moscow’s plan to set up oil reserves to influence global prices. The ideal oil production reserve was aired by Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin at an international energy forum in Moscow on Wednesday. The price of Russian Urals crude fell below $70 per barrel on Wednesday for a second time this month, raising fears that the 2009 budget would be pushed in the red.
The Russia-OPEC talks came a day after Russia, Iran and Qatar, which account for over 60 per cent of global national gas reserves, at a meeting in Tehran, agreed to form a “big gas troika.” Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said the three nations reached “a consensus to set up a gas OPEC.”
Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom chief, Alexei Miller, said the new body would undertake joint projects in “exploration, refining and selling gas.” The three nations also decided to transform the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, a discussion club that also includes Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia and Libya “into a permanent organisation as quickly as possible to serve the goals of stable and reliable energy supplies in the world,” said Mr. Miller.
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