Qatar Becomes Largest Buyer of U.S. LNG Amid Hormuz Crisis
Oil Crashes 9% as Trump and Vance Blame Iran War for Midterm Rout Europe's declining natural gas consumption… What I Cover Tsvetana Paraskova is an energy and commodities journalist who has contributed to Oilprice.com for nearly a decade, covering global energy markets, commodities,… In an extraordinary turn of events, Qatar, the world’s second-largest LNG exporter before the Iran war, will become the biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas from the United States, the producer that overtook the Gulf nation as top LNG exporter earlier this decade.
This extraordinary turn of events is, of course, the result of the extraordinary disruption that the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz inflicted on Qatar, the LNG producer whose expansion plans for the rest of this decade were rivaled only by the U.S.
The war and the Strait of Hormuz crisis, which is still blocking much of Qatar’s LNG exports, have upended these plans.
State-energy firm QatarEnergy is now scrambling to repair the damage at its LNG facilities caused by Iranian missile attacks in March.
Theseattackstook out 17% of Qatar’s export capacity and caused an estimated loss of $20 billion in annual revenue, QatarEnergysaidin March.
Seven months later, Qatar is barely moving “very few” cargoes through the Strait of Hormuz as the protracted crisis chokes supply to markets of the LNG volumes that Qatar would have produced, even at reduced capacity.
QatarEnergy has been forced to declare force majeure for up to five years on some long-term LNG contracts.
Suddenly, Qatar faces tens of billions of dollars in losses from missed sales.
More importantly, the perception that Qatar is a reliable supplier of regular term deliveries has been undermined.Related: IEA Warns Global Gas Crunch Could Last Well into 2027 The Qatari state-owned energy giant last weekextended the force majeureon LNG deliveries to Asia and Europe by another month through the end of December 2026, as LNG cargo traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains largely blocked.
Unlike oil, LNG exporters cannot transport volumes via pipelines, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, President and CEO of QatarEnergy and Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs,saidin September.
“The problem is that LNG, our main export commodity, cannot be transported by pipelines.
We will have to transport it by pipelines as gas and then liquify it at receiving terminals wherever that may be,” Al-Kaabi said at the Qatar Economic Forum Special Edition in New York in September.
| Product | Price | Change |
|---|---|---|
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| WTI Crude | $96.90/bbl | +0.21% |
| EN590 Diesel | $846/MT | +0.18% |
| Jet Fuel A-1 | $1090/MT | +0.55% |
| Mazut M100 | $450/MT | -0.15% |
| Bitumen 60/70 | $470/MT | +0.08% |
| Sulphur Gran 99.5% | $470/MT | -0.44% |
| Urea 46% Gran | $650/MT | +1.12% |
| NPK 16-16-16 | $460/MT | -0.28% |
| Nat Gas TTF | $15.42/MMBtu | +0.92% |
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