Gulf News reported that members of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum ended their 13th ministerial meeting and their first summit last week in Doha amid concern about natural gas prices that have been falling since the global financial crisis of 2008.

World gas demand fell by 2.1% from its 2008 level but recovered and rose by 7.3% in 2010 mainly due increase in Japan's LNG imports in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis.

Although oil prices recovered from the lows of December 2008 when they reached USD 35 per barrel to the present level of over USD 100 gas prices fell from USD 12 per million British thermal units to as low as USD 3 and now are about USD 4 per million British thermal units.

The summit declaration reiterated the need to reach a fair price for natural gas based on gas to oil prices indexation and recognize the importance of long-term gas contracts to achieve a balanced risk sharing mechanism between producers and consumers.

Mr Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani the Emir of Qatar said that the problem is that while complaint about the level of prices is loud it is not clear how the Forum will be able to reach fair prices which many statements equate to parity with oil prices. It is illogical that discrepancies between oil prices and gas prices increase in favor of the first but he added that he does not call for controlling production to influence prices.”