Investigating Whether the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) Can be Considered a Cartel: Application of Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bound Test and the Toda-Yamamoto Causality Test

The natural gas market is currently undergoing dramatic changes and is becoming globalized. One of the major developments in the global natural gas market in recent years is the establishment of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). Since the founding of this forum, there have been many speculations about whether GECF would become a cartel like OPEC. Cartels contributes to the coordination of productive behavior between members  and influence  global prices using theirmonopoly power. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the production of Gas Exporting Countries Forum  members,  coordination of production behavior and decisions, and the relationship between the production of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum and  global gas prices, using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bound Test and the Toda-Yamamoto causality test. The results of the study showed that,  there is no harmony of productive behavior between members and that GECF  does not influence the price of natural gas in global markets. Therefore, the assumption  that GECF acts as a cartel is rejected. JEL Classification: Q42, Q43, Q49 Keywords: Natural Gas, Gas Exporting Countries Forum, Cartel, Bound Test.