The numbers arrived quickly and they were not subtle.
Benchmark Dutch and British wholesale gas prices surged by 52% last Monday after QatarEnergy announced it was halting production at its facilities in Ras Laffan and Mesaieed following Iranian drone strikes. Asian LNG spot prices jumped 39%.
Oil climbed 13% intraday to above $82 a barrel, its highest since January 2025. These were not projections or risk scenarios. They were market responses to a single morning’s news: that the world’s largest LNG exporter had ceased operations, with no timeline given for resumption.
Qatar supplies approximately 20% of global LNG and exports around 77 million tonnes per year across 14 liquefaction trains at Ras Laffan. When that goes offline, there is no quick substitute.
What Actually Happened
On 2 March, Qatar’s Ministry of Defence confirmed that two Iranian drones had targeted the country’s energy infrastructure. One struck a water tank at a power plant in Mesaieed. The other hit an energy facility inside Ras Laffan Industrial City operated by QatarEnergy. No casualties were reported.
QatarEnergy halted production as a precaution whilst damage assessments and security checks were carried out, and on 4 March it formally declared force majeure to affected buyers, formalising the suspension of cargo deliveries. That same morning, Qatar’s air and naval defences intercepted 10 more drones and two cruise missiles launched from Iran, a signal that the attacks were not a one-off.
The production halt also triggered a cascade of downstream shutdowns that extended well beyond LNG itself. QatarEnergy confirmed suspension of associated products including urea, polymers, methanol, and aluminium.
Four companies listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange announced plans to reduce or suspend operations: Mesaieed Petrochemical Holding Company, Qatar Aluminium Manufacturing Company, and two others. Qatar Aluminium initiated a phased and orderly shutdown of the Qatalum joint venture. These are not marginal industrial activities.
They feed global supply chains for fertilisers, plastics, and construction materials that have nothing to do with gas heating but everything to do with how the disruption spreads beyond energy markets.
The Strait of Hormuz Problem
The force majeure notification matters in isolation. It matters more when set against the broader maritime situation.
According to S&P Global data cited by The National, Qatar accounts for 93% of all LNG traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, with the UAE accounting for the remainder.
At the time of writing, at least 150 vessels have dropped anchor on either side of the strait, including those carrying LNG, as tankers await clearance to transit a waterway that carries approximately a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil alongside the bulk of Qatari gas. The combination of production halted onshore and maritime transit disrupted offshore creates a compounding effect that neither problem would produce alone.
This is the structural vulnerability that years of energy security discussion have identified but never fully resolved. Qatar has no alternative export route. Unlike Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers, which can move crude through Red Sea terminals using overland pipelines, Qatari LNG moves exclusively through Hormuz. There is no Plan B when Hormuz is contested.
Who Feels It First
The impact is not evenly distributed across global markets. In India, the consequences are immediate and acute. Qatar supplied 45.6 per cent of India’s LNG imports across 2025, averaging 0.95 million tonnes per month, according to The National.
In February 2026, just before the production halt, Qatar accounted for 41.2% of India’s 1.86 million tonnes of monthly imports. Indian authorities have instructed industry to cut gas supply by 10 to 20% following the loss of Qatari volumes.
Petronet LNG, which operates major receiving terminals on India’s west coast, has been directly affected by the supply cut, and GAIL saw its allocations reduced to zero for a period according to Reuters.
For Europe, the picture is less immediately critical but carries its own anxiety. Qatar has become an increasingly important supplier since the continent began reducing its dependence on Russian pipeline gas after 2022, when Russia was the world’s largest LNG exporter before its sales collapsed following the Ukraine invasion.
Maksim Sonin, an energy expert at Stanford University’s Center for Fuels of the Future, told Al Jazeera he does not expect a repeat of the 2022 gas crisis, partly because the worst of the European winter may be behind.
The EU’s gas coordination group convened on Wednesday to assess the impact. The reassurance is conditional: it holds only if the disruption does not persist into the autumn replenishment period.
Confidence is the Hidden Commodity
Energy markets run on molecules and on confidence, and the two are not always separable.
Companies sign long-term contracts because predictability is valuable. When force majeure is declared, predictability is the first thing that disappears, and it does not return at the same rate that physical supply does. Once buyers start treating supply interruptions as a realistic scenario rather than a tail risk, their behaviour changes. They compete for spot cargoes, push up freight rates, over-contract on alternatives, and treat energy security as something purchased at a premium rather than assumed.
That shift is already visible in the current market data. Tanker freight rates have risen alongside spot LNG prices. The US, now the world’s largest LNG exporter, and Australia cannot fully offset a prolonged Qatari outage in the near term. Other suppliers, including Oman, the UAE, and African producers, are being approached for additional volumes, but the global LNG market operates with limited spare capacity by design.
Efficiency was built in at the expense of redundancy, and that trade-off is now clearly visible. Sonin’s assessment that the situation represents volatility rather than crisis is probably correct for now. It contains an important qualifier: “if infrastructure in Qatar and other hubs is not further damaged.”
That condition has not yet been met, and Hormuz remains contested.
Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates!
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