12MAY

IEA logs Hormuz LNG loss at 2 bcm weekly

2 min read

10:23UTC

The IEA April Oil Market Report quantified the Hormuz disruption as removing over 300 Mmcm per day of LNG from Qatar and UAE since 1 March 2026, roughly 2 bcm per week and 12 bcm accumulated over six weeks, with mid-year resumption as the base case.

← Back to Storage 35% met, 80% trajectory still missed Jump to analysis ↓

EconomicDeveloping

Key takeaway

Over 2 bcm per week of Hormuz LNG supply is removed, IEA base case mid-year return.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) published its April 2026 Oil Market Report quantifying the Hormuz disruption as removing over 300 Mmcm per day of LNG from Qatar and UAE since 1 March, more than 2 bcm per week and approximately 12 bcm accumulated over six weeks ¹. The report sets the IEA base case as a mid-year resumption of Middle East deliveries, not a return to pre-conflict levels.

The IEA is the Paris-based intergovernmental body whose monthly Oil Market Report is the primary multilateral quantification of global oil and gas balances. Placing the Hormuz LNG loss as a weekly run-rate rather than a cumulative figure lets market participants track whether the disruption is stable, deepening, or easing week by week. A stable run-rate at 2 bcm per week for six weeks is the signal the report is sending.

The figure sits against the EU storage starting position of 29.55% on 13 April . If more than 12 bcm of global supply has already been removed in six weeks, Europe's ability to outbid Asia for marginal cargoes deteriorates each week the disruption holds. The JKM-TTF spread geometry currently gives flexible Atlantic cargoes no routing-cost case for a European bias, which means the OIES-identified gap is not being closed by arbitrage; it would have to be closed by outbidding Asian spot demand outright.

The IEA mid-year base case deserves the pressure test. Counting from the closure date, the 90-day Qatari normalisation clock places the earliest plausible return well inside the European injection window, overlapping with Equinor's Hammerfest LNG planned restart. Any slippage on either side of that alignment extends the window during which European injection runs without the Qatari leg. The IEA's tracker in subsequent monthly reports will show whether the 2 bcm per week run-rate stabilises or deepens as the Q2 clock advances.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is a global organisation of energy-importing countries that publishes monthly analyses of oil and gas markets. Its April 2026 report calculated that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has been removing more than 2 billion cubic metres of gas per week from global markets since 1 March mostly gas from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that would normally flow to Europe and Asia. Over six weeks that adds up to roughly 12 billion cubic metres about a third of what Europe typically injects into storage over an entire summer. The IEA expects Middle East gas flows to start returning around mid-year, but that estimate depends on a ceasefire holding and significant technical work at the affected export facilities.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The 2 bcm per week run-rate loss represents the structural consequence of concentrating 17% of global LNG export capacity in a single geographic complex at the end of a strait that has historically been subject to geopolitical risk. The Ras Laffan complex was built on the commercial logic that Hormuz is a stable transit corridor protected by CENTCOM deterrence. That deterrence failed to prevent the March 2026 strikes and the subsequent closure.

The force majeure declaration reveals a second structural risk: the legal architecture of Qatari LNG contracts does not provide European buyers with contractual remedies for a supply interruption attributable to a geopolitical event at the seller's end. Buyers in Belgium, Italy, and Poland face both a physical shortage and a contractual dead-end simultaneously.

What could happen next?

Consequence
The 2 bcm per week run-rate provides market participants with a weekly benchmarking tool: IEA's subsequent monthly reports will confirm whether the disruption is stable, deepening, or easing.
Risk
If the mid-year resumption assumption slips by four to six weeks, the overlap with Hammerfest's maintenance window extends, removing two flexible supply offsets from the injection season simultaneously.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Consensus view: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's energy security programme assesses the IEA mid-year resumption base case as optimistic: a Ras Laffan infrastructure assessment, followed by QatarEnergy commercial scheduling reconstruction and tanker repositioning, has historically taken three to five months after a force majeure event which places realistic mid-year resumption at Q3 earliest, not late Q2.

Counter-view: The Gulf Cooperation Council's Economic Affairs Secretariat argues that Qatar's long-term LNG buyers primarily in Japan, South Korea, and the EU have a strong mutual interest in expedited normalisation and will accept a phased restart at 60-70% of pre-conflict loading rates to begin recovering lost volume, reducing the actual supply gap more quickly than an all-or-nothing resumption model suggests.

Key tension: Whether the IEA's mid-year base case should be modelled as a binary full-resumption event or a probabilistic partial-resumption ramp that begins earlier but delivers fewer molecules per week over a longer period.

Sources:IEA

Mentions:International Energy Agency →QatarEnergy →Ras Laffan Industrial City →Carnegie Endowment for International Peace →Japan →South Korea →Qatar →TTF →Equinor →Hammerfest LNG →Strait of Hormuz →JKM →LNG Prime →Strait of Hormuz Toll System →United Arab Emirates (UAE) →University of Oxford Institute for Energy Studies →

First Reported In

Update #3 · TTF holds six-week low as supply stack hardens

IEA· 17 Apr 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

This Event

IEA logs Hormuz LNG loss at 2 bcm weekly

The primary multilateral estimate confirms the scale of the supply loss and anchors a mid-year return assumption that sits alongside the 90-day Qatari normalisation clock.

Led to

IRGC seizes Epaminondas and MSC Francesca

IEA April OMR quantified the Hormuz LNG loss at over 2 bcm per week, providing the baseline against which Iran's 18 April re-closure escalated supply risk.

Occurred 22 Apr 2026

Read story →

IEA pivots: Hormuz delay now multi-year, not mid-year

The IEA Q2 GMR multi-year delay revision directly supersedes the mid-year resumption base case published in the IEA April OMR tracked in ID:2526.

Occurred 25 Apr 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

Hungarian and Slovak gas buyers and regulators

Hungary cleared EUR 123.23/MWh on 12 May, EUR 54 above Spain's same-day clearing and the largest single-market premium of the briefing series, as ACER named it among seven NRAs in TurkStream derogation opinions with the 5 August EC ruling pending. A denial of derogation removes the only available pipeline substitute for Russian LNG banned since 25 April.

Norwegian upstream producers (Equinor, ORLEN Upstream Norway)

Equinor started the Eirin field on 5 May (27.6 mmboe via Gassled) and signed NOK 17bn of Q1 drilling contracts on USD 9.77bn adjusted operating income. These are long-horizon defences against the Sodir-confirmed Norwegian production decline, not molecules deliverable inside the 2026 injection window.

European Commission (DG Energy)

The Commission cut the storage target from 90% to 80% in April without enforcement teeth; a second formal cut requires Council unanimity not currently available, leaving silent acceptance of a sub-80% landing as the operative policy posture. The AccelerateEU package offered no storage injection mechanism, confirming consumer-relief tools as the preferred instrument.

Major LNG buyers (Japanese and Korean utilities)

With JKM-TTF at USD 2.30/MMBtu, Asian buyers retain the routing premium on flexible Atlantic cargoes by a margin of USD 0.80 to 1.10/MMBtu above the cargo-diversion breakeven. The spring demand softening that compressed the spread from USD 3 or more has not reversed the routing direction, and Asian buyers face no material competitive threat from European procurement at prevailing TTF.

Industrial gas consumers (BASF, Yara, Cefic members)

BASF flagged Verbund site production freezes and Yara curtailed 25% of European output at EUR 47 TTF, confirming that the industrial demand destruction threshold has migrated EUR 23 below the 2022 ceiling. Without a gas price subsidy instrument or trade protection on fertiliser imports, further curtailment is the rational response to any TTF move above EUR 50.

National energy regulators (BNetzA, CRE, ACER)

ACER's 6 May TurkStream derogation opinions put seven NRAs on notice that the 5 August EC ruling window is live; the concurrent Hungary EUR 123/MWh single-market premium compounds the political pressure on the Commission to either grant or formally deny the derogations before the code application date.