DUSHANBE, December 8, 2013, Asia-Plus – The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members have signed a memorandum on creation of the SCO Energy Club.

Interfax.ru quoted Russian Deputy Minister of Energy, Anatoly Yanovsky, as saying that the document was signed by deputy energy ministers of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, China, Mongolia, India, Afghanistan, Turkey and Sri Lanka in Moscow on December 6.

A platform is being created for discussing energy-related issues, including demand for and consumption of energy, cooperation between energy producers and consumers, new technologies and innovations, Yanovsky was cited as saying.

The idea of establishing an energy club was first introduced in 2004, although SCO members had diverging opinions on it.  Some experts note that the Energy Club could be the forerunner of a common energy space.  Forming of common energy space of the SCO reportedly require political decision making on issues such as price liberalization, standardization of tariffs for transportation of energy resources, development of unified common tax base, coordination of actions at the level of suppliers in order to avoid unnecessary competition between them.

The SCO was founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001, and currently has six full members -- China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and India are four observer states, and SCO’s dialogue partners include Belarus, Sri Lanka and Turkey.