Ras Laffan Industrial City

Built from 1996 on Qatar's northeastern coast to exploit the North Field, the world's largest single gas reservoir shared with Iran's South Pars field, Ras Laffan became the operational centre of Qatar's LNG export economy. The facility operates 14 liquefaction trains and exports roughly 77 million tonnes of LNG annually, approximately 17% of global LNG export capacity. Operator QatarEnergy had committed to an expansion to 126 mtpa before the 2026 conflict. Long-term supply contracts link the facility to buyers across Japan, South Korea, China, India, and Europe.

Iranian drone and Ballistic missile strikes hit Ras Laffan in March 2026, forcing QatarEnergy to declare Force majeure on European supply contracts. No Qatari LNG has transited the Strait of Hormuz since 28 February 2026. A separate 1 April IRGC strike on a QatarEnergy fuel oil tanker inside Qatari territorial waters halted downstream urea production, driving global urea prices to $700/tonne.

Ras Laffan's suspension falls alongside the EU's 25 April 2026 short-term contract ban on Russian LNG, removing two major supply sources at once from European import portfolios. The IEA April 2026 Oil Market Report quantified the Hormuz disruption as removing over 300 mcm/day from global supply. Following the June 2026 US-Iran memorandum, QatarEnergy told buyers it can reach 50% of pre-war capacity within one month of SAFE Hormuz passage and 80% within two months; however, the two-train loss permanently caps recovery at roughly 80% of the pre-war rate regardless of Hormuz status. Multi-year reconstruction is required for full restoration. OIES's June 2026 Comment quantified the resulting European LNG shortfall at 2.1 bcm per month through October, projecting EU storage reaching only 70% rather than the mandated 80% by November.

That guided timeline has not held. Four days after the 29 June US-Iran stand-down, QatarEnergy was running at only 35% of Ras Laffan's 77 MTPA nameplate, short of the 50%-within-a-month pace it had guided at reopening, while IMF PortWatch counted just 27-43 daily Hormuz transits against an 84 pre-crisis baseline. Lloyd's List attributes the shortfall to strait logistics rather than diplomacy: naval escort convoys clear only three to four tankers a day on seven to eight warships, a ratio that cannot scale without more vessels in the corridor, meaning Ras Laffan's restart is now capped by escort capacity as much as by its own two destroyed trains.