Addressing a meeting of ministers from the world's major gas-exporting countries in Moscow on Tuesday, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that the era of cheap gas is coming to an end as the cost of extracting gas has increased sharply in the recent years.
"Costs, which are necessary to develop the [energy] sphere, are rising sharply," Putin said at the meeting. "It means that despite the global financial crisis and price drop for energy resources, the era of cheap energy, including cheap gas, is coming to an end."
Russia is currently hosting a meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Moscow, and the meeting is being attended by ministers from 13 other gas-exporting countries.
The countries attending the meeting in Moscow are Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Equatorial Guinea and Norway are attending the conference as observers.
It is widely believed that the meeting is intended to develop the GECF as a Opec-style producers' cartel to combat the fall in international oil prices.
The GECF meeting comes just weeks ahead of the January 1st deadline set by Russia for Ukraine to repay its gas debts. Russia's state-controlled gas company Gazprom has warned of potential disruptions in gas supplies to Europe this winter if Ukraine fails to pay up its $2 billion gas debt by the set dead line.
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