Iran Burning Gas Worth Billions Set to Lead Exporters Group
By Robert Tuttle and Yeganeh Salehi - Nov 4, 2013
Iran will lead a club of the world’s biggest natural gas exporters as its own shipments abroad are hampered by U.S. and European Union sanctions that force the country to burn off billions of dollars worth of the fuel.
Mohammad Hossein Adeli, the country’s former deputy foreign minister, was elected secretary-general of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, whose 13 member countries hold 60 percent of the world’s reserves, the group said yesterday in a statement. Adeli, who will replace Leonid Bokhanovsky of Russia next year, vowed to turn the Persian nation into a “major player among the gas exporting countries,” he told reporters after a group meeting in Tehran.
U.S. and EU trade sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program have cut the Persian nation’s crude exports, its largest revenue source, by half since 2011 and are stifling projects to export some of its gas reserves, the world’s largest. Iran is one of three GECF members that are net importers as the group faces increased competition from liquefied natural gas projects from the U.S. to Australia.
The vote is “a signal that attitudes toward Iran perhaps are thawing, and tension easing, since they were elected to represent this group on the international stage,” Tom James, a Dubai-based managing director of Navitas Resources Ltd., an energy and commodity markets adviser, said yesterday by e-mail.
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