Iran's president to attend GECF summit in Moscow

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will attend a summit meeting of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) in Russia next month, semi-official Fars news agency reported on Tuesday. The Iranian president is to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the meeting which will be held in Moscow on July 1-2, said the report. The first day of the GECF summit would be devoted to leaders' meeting; and bilateral discussions will be held among experts of member states on the second day of the event. The forum is a multi-layered and an intergovernmental organization of the world's leading natural gas producers comprising Algeria, Bolivia, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Kazakhstan, Iraq, the Netherlands and Norway have the status of observer members. The first GECF summit meeting was held in the Qatari capital of Doha on November 15, 2011. The South Pars/North Dome field is a natural gas condensate field located in the Persian Gulf. It is the world's largest gas field, shared between Iran and Qatar. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the field holds an estimated 1, 800 trillion cubic feet (51 trillion cubic meters) of in-situ natural gas and some 50 billion barrels of natural gas condensate. Iran, which is striving to up its gas production by increasing foreign and domestic investments, is under unilateral Western sanction pressure on its crude oil and natural gas exports. The West has accused Iran of secretly developing nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian nuclear program, a charge Tehran has consistently denied.