Murali Deora, Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas has urged the need for sustainable international oil prices stating that the high oil prices are neither in the interest of oil importing countries nor beneficial to the exporting nations.

The minister was addressing the second Ministerial Energy Roundtable of Asian Oil Producing and major Asian Oil Importing Countries, at Riyadh.

Referring to the three-fold increase in global oil prices between 2000 and 2006, Deora pointed out that the high oil prices in the long run will badly affect both oil producing and importing countries.

The high oil prices leads to fall in demand by encouraging conservation & technological innovations and makes alternative investments for energy attractive besides putting strains on the resources of oil importing developing countries.

In order to keeping the oil prices stable and affordable, Deora urged to formulate appropriate strategies.

The minister reiterated India's commitment to the forum which was initiated in India in January 2005.

Deora also strongly supported the idea of greater inter-dependence, supplemented by cross investment in energy markets to promote shared interest of energy producers and consumers.

The minister called upon Asian countries to explore various opportunities for forging partnerships in oil and gas sector.

He explained the need for co-operation for optimum exploration of hydrocarbons, expansion and modernization of refining infrastructure, augmentation of regional oil and gas transport infrastructure and exchange of information and development of knowledge in Asia.

On the sidelines of the roundtable, Murali Deora met his Iranian Oil Minister Seyed Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh and Pakistani Petroleum Minister Amanullah Khan Jadoon to discuss cooperation in hydrocarbon sector including the Iran-Pakistan-India Gas Pipeline Project.

In the meeting with the Iranian minister Deora further discussed the vexed issue of the LNG contract as a follow up of their last meeting in Tehran.

Deora had recently returned from his tour of Iran where he had discussed both IPI Gas Pipeline Project as well as the Indo - Iran LNG contract for 5 million tonne which was signed in June 2005 at Tehran.

Deora also had a bilateral meeting with Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain Al-Shahristani and raised the issue of moving forward with OVL's participation in Iraq's upstream oil sector. The Iraqi minister invited IOCL and EIL to consider participation in the downstream sector of Iraq in particular for construction of oil refinery.

Saudi Arabian Oil minister Engineer Ali Al Naimi received the Indian Minister at Riyadh Airport and the two ministers took the opportunity to discuss very strong bilateral relations between the two countries. Saudi Arabia is the largest supplier of crude oil to India.

Murali Deora is attending the second Asian Ministerial Energy Roundtable in Riyadh. He is accompanied by a high level delegation comprising chief executive officers of Oil and Natural Gas Corp, Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp, Hindustan Petroleum Corp and Engineers India.