QatarEnergy confirmed it had ceased all LNG production at Ras Laffan and Mesaieed following Monday's Iranian drone strikes. Ras Laffan is the world's largest LNG export facility — 14 processing trains with 77 million tonnes of annual capacity. Qatar produces 20% of the world's Liquefied Natural Gas. The shutdown is the single largest removal of LNG supply from global markets since the commodity began trading at scale.
The production halt completes a systematic degradation of The Gulf's energy export architecture. The IRGC's closure of the strait of Hormuz cut transit, with more than 150 tankers anchored in open waters. A separate strike shut Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura refinery — 550,000 barrels per day of refining capacity. With Ras Laffan offline, Iran has disabled all three pillars: production, refining, and transit. No single actor has simultaneously disrupted Gulf energy output at this scale since Saddam Hussein's forces set fire to Kuwaiti oil wells during the 1991 Gulf War.
LNG facilities cannot be rerouted or substituted in days. Liquefaction trains take three to five years to build and require specialised cold-chain infrastructure vulnerable to drone and missile attack. QatarEnergy's decision to halt operations reflects a judgement that continued production under threat is untenable. Restarting LNG trains after a safety shutdown typically takes days to weeks, depending on the damage assessment required.
Qatar had been expanding Ras Laffan through the North Field Expansion — the largest LNG project in history, intended to raise output to 126 million tonnes per year by 2027. Those expansion plans assumed the facilities themselves were not targets. That assumption is now void.
