QatarEnergy

QatarEnergy is Qatar's state-owned energy company and the world's largest LNG exporter, supplying roughly 20% of global Liquefied Natural Gas. Its processing clusters at Ras Laffan Industrial City and Mesaieed Petrochemical City draw gas from the North Field, the largest single natural gas reservoir on earth, a structure Qatar shares with Iran, which calls its portion South Pars. CEO Saad al-Kaabi confirmed in late March 2026 that Iranian strikes had caused significant LNG losses, interrupting supply chains that Europe, Japan, South Korea, and India had built around Qatari exports, and that the Force majeure declared to buyers in Belgium, Italy, and Poland remains in force.

Iran escalated further on 1 April 2026, striking a QatarEnergy fuel oil tanker inside Qatari territorial waters. QatarEnergy halted downstream urea production in response; urea prices reached $700 per metric tonne, up from a pre-war range of $400-490. A first IRGC salvo on Ras Laffan threatened roughly a fifth of global LNG supply in a single strike, and British Typhoon aircraft were deployed partly around protecting Gulf Energy infrastructure, signalling that QatarEnergy's output had become a NATO-adjacent security concern.

The Force majeure persists as of 15 April 2026, and the restart is reported to be months away. March 2026 saw record EU LNG imports, but the record was driven by US and Russian volumes, not a resumption of Qatari supply. The EU's Russian LNG short-term contract ban enters force on 25 April, removing a further 17 bcm/year with no named substitute; the gap that QatarEnergy would historically fill cannot be filled while Ras Laffan is impaired. QatarEnergy's output underpins Qatar's per-Capita GDP, funds the Qatar Investment Authority (estimated at $475 billion), and gives Doha geopolitical leverage disproportionate to its population of 2.9 million.