Rumours are abound that there may well be a cartel offing in the gas sector with various countries including russia setting up the equivalent of Opec in the gas market. The reason why Opec holds so much sway is that their oil is the marginal oil. It is clear that although Russia and a few others would be large they would not be enough to hold the swing gas.

So they are thinking of pegging the gas price to the new liquid and growingly traded LNG settled price. LNG is the swing gas and if countries are short of gas they can ship LNG in boats to their countries. There are some good parralels with oil and although this is not imminent it will be interesting to watch to see what develops.