CIAO DATE: 07/2008

Producer-Consumer Dialogue: What can energy ministers say to one another?

November 2005

Chatham House

Abstract

The development of exceptionally high oil prices since mid-2004 has attracted increased political attention. High level discussions may provide a political stimulus for further development of a producer-consumer dialogue additional to the international trade which unites billions of consumers with hundreds of oil producing enterprises.

Exporting and importing governments share the general aspirations and commitments, which affect energy, in the UN Resolution on Sustainable Development, the Johannesburg Plan of Action on Sustainable Development, and in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (but not the Kyoto Protocol). Under these frameworks, dialogue countries could consider together initiatives such as:

• International financial facilities to help, during oil price surges, those poor countries which depend on imported oil for power generation;
• Co-operation on some technology-based climate measure - such as carbon sequestration;
• Articulating proposals for compensatory measures (envisaged under Article 8 of the Kyoto protocol) for consideration in any post-Kyoto agreement;
• Developing criteria for "fairness between fuels" to relate emission control policies more scientifically to their climate objectives.

 

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