President of UN climate summit in Qatar says shale gas is "good news" The President of the forthcoming UN Climate Change Summit in Qatar says shale gas is "good news" and will ensure global energy security for the next 300 years. In comments which raise serious questions over Qatar's ambitions for the COP18 negotiations, which start in Doha on November 26, His Excellency Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, deputy Prime Minister of the Gulf state, said the exploitation of unconventional sources of fossil fuels would be good for consumers. "It's good news because it gives the world trust and confidence in gas," he told a TV reporter at the 2012 Oil and Money Conference . "A few years ago there was uncertainty about enough supply to the world -- today the gas will give the world 300 years of security. I believe this is good news and it will give the consumer more trust in gas." Al-Attiyah, who is a former President of OPEC and won the Petroleum Executive of the Year Award in 2008, was speaking a day after the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that "no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to avoid warming by 2C, unless carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology can be deployed". Earlier this year the IEA's chief economist Fatih Birol said the world was on course to warm by 6C, unless urgent action was taken to avoid carbon lock-in before