Iran attacks wipe out 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity for up to five years, QatarEnergy CEO says

Iranian attacks have knocked out 17% of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO and state minister for energy affairs tells Reuters on Thursday.

Saad al-Kaabi said two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged in the unprecedented strikes. The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tons per year of LNG for three to five years, he says in an interview.

“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,” Kaabi says.

Hours earlier, Iran had aimed a series of attacks at Gulf oil and gas facilities after Israeli attacks on its own gas infrastructure.

State-owned QatarEnergy 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, Kaabi said.

“These are long-term contracts that we have to declare force majeure. We already declared, but that was a shorter term. Now it’s whatever the period is,” he says.