U.S. natural gas exporters will be the big winners of this energy crisis

Qatar’s Long-Term Gas Supply Facility Shutdown Will Further Solidify the U.S.’s Position as the World’s Top LNG Exporter

Content Summary

An Iranian attack severely damaged Qatar’s Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas hub, leading to the facilities being shut down for the long term and reducing the world’s daily natural gas supply by nearly 12 billion cubic feet.

As Iranian attacks target energy export facilities across neighboring countries, U.S. energy companies are expected to play an even more critical role in global liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade and earn massive profits.

As the world’s second-largest LNG exporter, Qatar’s LNG facilities are expected to be offline for several months and cannot be restored to pre-war production capacity levels. QatarEnergy, Qatar’s national oil company, earlier this month announced force majeure and said that attacks launched by Iran on Wednesday and Thursday caused extensive damage to its Ras Laffan hub.

A long-term shutdown will have a major impact on energy markets. Analysts say that the interruption to Qatar’s gas supply means the global daily natural gas supply will drop by nearly 12 billion cubic feet, about one-fifth of total global LNG supply. Even after the war ends, Qatar’s gas sources available for residential heating and industrial power generation will be significantly reduced.

The result is:

The United States, which is already the world’s largest LNG supplier, will gain a major advantage and profit as global inventories continue to be drawn down and buyers face the risk of supply disruptions for months. Although new LNG plants take years to build, some companies—including Venture Global—still have volumes not tied up in long-term contracts, and can now sell them at high prices in the spot market.

Related companies have received large volumes of inquiries from buyers, asking about new supply in the latter part of the 2020s. From the day before the outbreak of the conflict to today, Venture Global’s stock price has risen by about 60%, while Cheniere Energy’s stock price has risen by about 22%.

“America has the world’s largest incremental LNG production capacity, and it will play a key role in this historic period of market turbulence,” Venture Global CEO Michael Sabel told investors earlier this month, “and the company is ready to help stabilize the market and ensure supply.”

This is the second time within four years that large-scale energy supply disruptions have helped the U.S. consolidate its position as an energy superpower. From 2021 to 2022, Russia cut off more than 10 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas to Europe. European countries rushed to buy LNG from the U.S., pushing Asian buyers out of the market and forcing them to increase coal use and reduce energy consumption.

Since then, companies including Venture Global, Cheniere, and Sempra have approved investments totaling hundreds of billions of dollars to build new or expand large LNG plants. The U.S. still has some projects under construction, such as Exxon Mobil and QatarEnergy’s joint development and the long-delayed Calvi Bridge project, which is planned to come online this year. Earlier this month, Venture Global also approved an expansion project for its Cameron, Louisiana facility, with project financing of $8.6 billion.

According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2025 the U.S. is exporting more than 15 billion cubic feet of LNG per day on average, higher than 10.2 billion cubic feet in 2022. The Trump administration has made expanding such exports a core part of its energy-dominance agenda.

Ben Del, managing partner of the private equity firm Kimmeridge, said that besides the U.S., there are virtually no other alternatives: Australia, the world’s third-largest LNG producer, is near full capacity, and natural gas resources available for liquefaction facilities are nearly depleted.

Massimo Diodardo Aldo, an analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said, “There’s no doubt that U.S. LNG projects will see stronger momentum for development.”

While some LNG industry executives are optimistic about additional earnings, they are also wary of demand destruction. LNG prices remain at high levels, combined with a sharp surge in crude oil prices, which could ultimately lead to an economic slowdown.

Steven Miles, a researcher at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, said, “Weaker economic activity will weigh down all energy industries.”

QatarEnergy said on Thursday that after the attack its LNG export capacity dropped by about 17%, and that repairs are expected to take up to five years at most. The company expects to lose about $20 billion in revenue each year, and the supply disruption will affect European and Asian markets.

Industry executives and analysts said it is still too early to assess the specific impact on countries that rely on LNG from Qatar’s shutdown. U.S. capacity expansion means global LNG supply has increased significantly compared with a few years ago. Europe is heavily developing renewable energy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and in the near term Asian countries can also make up for the gap by increasing coal-fired power generation.

Even so, the chain reaction from the Iran war is beginning to show. Del said that the impact on Persian Gulf fossil energy could lead to the shutdown of Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes, thereby affecting the output of products such as plastics.

“I think in another two or three weeks, shortages will truly emerge in the relevant regions,” he said.

Before the Ras Laffan LNG hub in Qatar was hit, S&P Global Energy analysts had estimated that the country would need to at least the latter part of April to restart its facilities, and that a full return to production would take about eight weeks. They said that the recent attacks mean the restart timeline will be further extended, and until the two damaged liquefaction units are repaired, plant capacity will remain constrained; the process could take years, or even longer.

Martin Houston, former executive chairman of U.S. LNG exporter Tellurian, said that LNG plants require specialized equipment such as steel able to withstand extreme sub-zero temperatures, and procurement cycles are long. “When it involves specialized parts, there will inevitably be some delays,” he said.

S&P Global Energy analysts Ross Wainor said that currently LNG shipping is shifting from the Atlantic basin to Asia to fill the supply gap. Buyers in Asia are also swapping cargoes and trying to increase the share of coal-fired power generation. Taken together, these measures help ease the initial shock of the supply disruption.

S&P Global Energy calculations show that to respond to tightening markets, globally each LNG project theoretically could add up to 2.3 million to 2.8 million tons of loading per month from April to June, but that is far from enough to fill Qatar’s monthly supply gap of about 7 million tons.

“It simply can’t make up for most of the overall losses,” Wainor said.

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责任编辑：郭明煜