Iran attacks erased 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity - QatarEnergy CEO

Iranian attacks have wiped out 17% of Qatar’s liquified natural gas export capacity (LNG), equivalent to $20 billion in lost annual revenue, the CEO of Qatar’s state-owned energy company, Saad al-Kaabi said on Thursday (19 March).

The losses threaten supplies to Europe and Asia, with QatarEnergy declaring a force majeure, freeing it of obligations on long-term contracts for up to five years for LNG supplies bound for Italy, Belgium, South Korea and China. 

Kaabi said two of Qatar's 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged in ​the Iranian strikes. Repairs to the infrastructure will take 12.8 million tons of LNG out of the system for three to five years, he said.

"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 said.

Production at Pearl GTL in Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City stopped on Wednesday (18 March) after the industrial hub came under fire. Kaabi said that for production to restart, hostilities needed to end. 

• Qatar says fires at Ras Laffan Industrial City fully extinguished
• Tehran calls on EU to ramp up pressure on U.S. over Iran conflict
• First Iranian strike targeting Palestinians kills three women in West Bank

QatarEnergy previously declared a short-term force majeure on its entire output of LNG after an earlier attack on Ras Laffin. Shell is a partner in the damaged GTL facility, which will take up to a year to repair, while U.S. energy giant ExxonMobil is a partner in ‌the damaged ⁠LNG facilities.

The scale of the damage from the attacks has set the region back 10 ​to 20 years, Kaabi added. 

"If Israel ​attacked Iran, it's between Iran and Israel. It has nothing to do with us ​and the region. And so now, in addition to that, I'm saying that everybody in the world, whether it's Israel, whether it's the U.S., whether it's any other country, ​everybody should stay away from oil and gas facilities,” he said. 

Copied