The Minister, Ian MacFarlane, was a keynote speaker at Australia's first gas-to-liquids conference being held in the Sheraton Hotel in Perth.

"We in the Government have opposed cartels particularly in the energy sector, particularly in the oil energy sector, and on that basis, we don't see a place (for one) in the gas sector," the Minister said.

He said he had been asked the same question - Australia's response to a proposed gas cartel - by the Secretary General of the oil cartel, OPEC, last week during that executive's visit to Australia on his way to New Zealand.

The OPEC leader has been trying to raise the prospect of gas exporting countries forming a cartel along similar lines to the OPEC group, in a bid to wrest the balance of power from LNG buyers.