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ISTANBUL — After damage to energy production facilities and the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Qatar’s largest liquefied natural gas export facility will need at least three years to resume honoring its prewar supply obligations, a former QatarEnergy commercial official says.
For European allies who depend on Qatari gas, the supply chain damage and the diplomatic wreckage now compound each other.
Rashid Al-Mohanadi, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs who previously worked in Qatar’s LNG commercial sector, precisely quantified the production damage: Ras Laffan runs 17% below its pre-war output of 77 million tonnes per annum.
QatarEnergy has invoked force majeure on contracts — a formal declaration that extraordinary circumstances have made delivery impossible — and will purchase LNG on the spot market to sustain key buyer relationships while repairs proceed. It is a stopgap that does not close the supply gap.
“Either buyers would get their LNG later down the line, or — a solution we’ve used in the past — we would buy LNG off the market and sell it to buyers just for sustaining the relationship,” Mr. Al-Mohanadi said.
The supply disruption is already reshaping Gulf diplomacy.
Pakistan, which has stepped in to attempt to mediate the U.S.-Iran ceasefire process, is simultaneously courting Saudi Arabia and other Gulf partners to offset the economic shock the war has inflicted on Islamabad — a dynamic Arab News flagged this week.
The convergence of energy dependency and mediation leverage within the same set of relationships makes the Antalya forum consequential: Ankara’s corridor value and Doha’s LNG obligations now run through the same diplomatic circuit.
The exposure runs directly into NATO.
Qatar supplies roughly 30% of the United Kingdom’s gas requirements. A joint Typhoon squadron has seen Qatari and British pilots fly combat air patrol missions over Qatar during the conflict and training sorties over British airspace in peacetime.
Mr. Al-Mohanadi said that relationship will inform QatarEnergy’s prioritization calculus when supply resumes. It does not resolve a production deficit measured in years.
The split between buyers will not fall evenly. China can compensate partially through domestic coal. Taiwan and South Korea cannot replace Qatari volumes.
The asymmetry runs through Europe the same way — countries on shorter-term arrangements face harder adjustments than long-term Asian contract holders.
Saudi Arabia restored its East-West pipeline to full capacity last weekend, routing crude from the Eastern Province to the Red Sea port of Yanbu and bypassing Hormuz entirely — adding roughly 7 million barrels per day back to Aramco’s exportable supply.
Qatar follows the same logic in a different medium.
QatarEnergy produced its first LNG from Golden Pass on March 30. The converted Texas Gulf Coast terminal ships cargoes that transit neither Hormuz nor the Bab-el-Mandeb.
QatarEnergy’s external investment portfolio traces the same geography: production rights in Namibia, Senegal, Guyana and Brazil all map onto Atlantic routing. Golden Pass accelerates that reorientation. The volumes do not replace the Ras Laffan shortfall.
“Golden Pass is strategically positioned not only to feed transatlantic requirements but also requirements in Latin America,” Mr. Al-Mohanadi said.
Hundreds of vessels remain bottled up in the Persian Gulf, with some now being turned back into port by the U.S. Navy.
Mr. Al-Mohanadi said QatarEnergy’s prioritization between Asian and European buyers will rest on the nature of the contract and the depth of the relationship, not on politics. For European governments navigating a tight supply environment heading into winter, that distinction matters.
“Europe doesn’t want to become hostage to Russian supplies if they can get supplies from a partner,” he said.
Even after Hormuz access stabilizes, QatarEnergy faces a sequenced challenge: physical repairs at Ras Laffan, production ramp-up, and a backlog of unfulfilled obligations stacked behind a reduced output ceiling.
Force majeure suspends those obligations. It does not erase them. Summer demand reduction buys time. It does not close the structural gap.
“With the strait closed, we don’t really know when we can start honoring these buyers,” Mr. Al-Mohanadi said. “We’re hoping the strait opens soon.”
Qatar came through the conflict’s most acute phase without civilian fatalities. Schools have reopened. Mr. Al-Mohanadi, speaking from Doha, said daily life has stabilized. The forward risk depends on whether a resumption of peace talks in Pakistan can reopen one of the world’s most important waterways.
“All eyes are on Islamabad,” he said.
The International Monetary Fund opened spring meetings in Washington Tuesday by revising projected global growth down to 3.1% for 2026.
For Qatar’s buyers facing a three-year repair horizon, that projection is not background noise; it is the operating environment inside which force majeure gets renegotiated.
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