Qatar becomes largest buyer of US LNG amid Hormuz crisis

In an extraordinary turn of events, Qatar, the world’s second-largest LNG exporter before the Iran war, will become the biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas from the United States, the producer that overtook the Gulf nation as top LNG exporter earlier this decade.

This extraordinary turn of events is, of course, the result of the extraordinary disruption that the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz inflicted on Qatar, the LNG producer whose expansion plans for the rest of this decade were rivaled only by the US.

The war and the Strait of Hormuz crisis, which is still blocking much of Qatar’s LNG exports, have upended these plans. State-energy firm QatarEnergy is now scrambling to repair the damage at its LNG facilities caused by Iranian missile attacks in March. These attacks took out 17% of Qatar’s export capacity and caused an estimated loss of $20 billion in annual revenue, QatarEnergy said in March.

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Seven months later, Qatar is barely moving “very few” cargoes through the Strait of Hormuz as the protracted crisis chokes supply to markets of the LNG volumes that Qatar would have produced, even at reduced capacity.

QatarEnergy has been forced to declare force majeure for up to five years on some long-term LNG contracts. Suddenly, Qatar faces tens of billions of dollars in losses from missed sales. More importantly, the perception that Qatar is a reliable supplier of regular term deliveries has been undermined.

The Qatari state-owned energy giant last week extended the force majeure on LNG deliveries to Asia and Europe by another month through the end of December 2026, as LNG cargo traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains largely blocked.

Unlike oil, LNG exporters cannot transport volumes via pipelines, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, President and CEO of QatarEnergy and Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs, said in September.

“The problem is that LNG, our main export commodity, cannot be transported by pipelines. We will have to transport it by pipelines as gas and then liquify it at receiving terminals wherever that may be,” Al-Kaabi said at the Qatar Economic Forum Special Edition in New York in September.

“This means we are building redundant facilities to the ones we are already building in Qatar as part of the North Field expansion project. This makes no economic sense,” the minister explained, and added, “We have decided not to use pipelines as an alternative based on commercial and technical criteria.”

Referring to resuming LNG production and exports, “Qatar is ready to resume normal operations within a few weeks of the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz,” the official noted.

As we enter the ninth month of the Hormuz crisis, Qatar is hedging against what could be a forever-changed access through the chokepoint.

“Some shipments are going through the Iranian road to Pakistan, and some are going through the US road to other destinations, but it’s just a few ships that are passing, that were able to pass through the Strait, but it’s not much,” Al-Kaabi said at the Qatar Economic Forum in New York.

With its only route to market blocked, Qatar last month hedged its bets against future disruptions by signing two separate agreements to buy LNG from US producers to diversify its portfolio.

QatarEnergy signed two long-term deals with Cheniere to buy up to 4 million tons per annum of LNG from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi export facilities, with deliveries expected to begin in 2031 and continue through 2054.

The Qatari firm also signed a long-term agreement to buy 3 million tons per annum of LNG from Woodside Energy’s Louisiana LNG project, which is currently under construction. Deliveries on a free-on-board (FOB) basis are set to begin in 2030 for 20 years.

“These additional volumes make QatarEnergy the largest buyer of LNG from the U.S., and place us in a stronger position to meet the global growing needs for LNG,” QatarEnergy’s Al-Kaabi said.

“Our Golden Pass LNG project and our expanding portfolio of U.S. LNG purchases reinforce QatarEnergy’s leadership in the LNG industry and support our long-term growth and diversification strategy.”

With Hormuz out of the picture in the near term and uncertainty about disruptions in the longer term, Qatar is expanding its LNG supply options with deliveries from its biggest rival, the United States.

The deal with Woodside “reflects QatarEnergy’s continued confidence in the long-term role of LNG in the global energy mix and its strategy to further develop a flexible, diversified and globally competitive LNG portfolio,” the Qatari firm said, as the Iran war fundamentally changed the global LNG supply market in both availability and reliability.