NEW DELHI, 21 March 2026 : The Iranian strikes on its Gulf neighbours have disrupted about 17 per cent of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue, Saad al-Kaabi, Qatar Energy’s CEO and state minister for energy affairs, said.
Those losses have implications ranging from LPG used in restaurants in India to South Korea’s chipmakers, which use helium.
According to al-Kaabi, the repairs will sideline 12.8 million tonnes per year of LNG for three to five years, threatening supplies to European and Asian nations, including China and India.
At least two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged in the unprecedented Iranian strikes over the past few days.
“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that Qatar would be — Qatar and the region — in such an attack, especially from a brotherly Muslim country in the month of Ramadan, attacking us in this way,” al-Kaabi told news agency Reuters.
The state-owned QatarEnergy has said that it will have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts for up to five years for LNG supplies bound for Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China due to the two damaged trains.
Iran has aimed a series of attacks at Gulf oil and gas facilities after Israeli attacks on its own gas infrastructure. On Wednesday, the turmoil intensified following an Iranian missile attack on Ras Laffan, Qatar’s largest LNG plant, following which QatarEnergy had to declare force majeure on its entire output of LNG.
“For production to restart, first we need hostilities to cease,” al-Kaabi told Reuters.
