Qatar LNG Crisis: Why Doha Is Buying US Gas to 2054

Qatar built its wealth on one product. Ras Laffan Industrial City, on the northern tip of the peninsula, liquefies gas from the offshore North Field and ships around 80 million tonnes a year to the world. That trade earned the state roughly $45 billion to $55 billion a year. It also paid for a sovereign wealth fund among the largest in the world and for Al Jazeera, the most influential news channel in the Arab world.

Two blows hit at once. Iran’s attacks, which began on February 28, closed the Strait of Hormuz to normal traffic. QatarEnergy halted all LNG production on March 2 after drones struck Ras Laffan and Mesaieed, and on March 18 an Iranian strike on Ras Laffan knocked out two of Qatar’s 14 liquefaction trains. Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi said 17 percent of export capacity was lost, with repairs taking three to five years. QatarEnergy has declared force majeure on its contracts every month since.

The emir’s own words were blunt. In his speech opening the Shura Council’s 55th session, he said total revenue declined by 42 percent in the first half of the year, while public spending fell 14 percent “without compromising essential services or development priorities.”

The 42 percent figure is not the whole story. Governments in a crisis rarely publish their worst numbers, and the shipping data is far grimmer than the capacity data. According to Kpler figures reported on October 12, Qatar shipped 1.6 million tonnes of LNG in September, its best month since the war began and still less than a quarter of its pre-war monthly average. Kpler expected October to fall to about 0.6 million tonnes. A country that can sell barely a fifth of its main export has lost far more than 42 percent of what it used to earn, and the second half of 2026 is shaping up to be worse than the first.

On October 22 QatarEnergy agreed to buy 4 million tonnes a year of LNG from Cheniere Energy until 2054, Bloomberg reported. The cargoes will come from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass and Corpus Christi terminals, with deliveries expected in the 2030s. Al-Kaabi said the agreement would “grow and diversify” QatarEnergy’s global LNG portfolio and complement its existing supply.

The commercial logic is simple. Asian buyers who stop receiving Qatari cargoes will sign with American suppliers instead, and Qatar wants to keep them. By reselling US gas, Doha tells its customers that their share is still reserved with Qatar.

The timing is what matters. Even Bloomberg’s coverage asked why a deal meant to fill a gap would only start delivering around 2030. The most plausible reading is that Qatar’s own assessment of the Ras Laffan damage, and of how long Hormuz will stay dangerous, runs to the end of the decade. The volume is modest beside Qatar’s own output, but the signal is not. This is a pessimistic government paying now for a long crisis, and that is the right call.

There is a risk in it. If Washington and Tehran strike a deal, Hormuz reopens and the damaged trains are repaired by 2027, Qatar could find itself locked into gas it no longer needs, and that could become a quarrel with the United States. For now, Doha is planning for the dark scenario.

Qatar is the country Washington relies on to reach Tehran. When the two sides want to talk, the conversation usually starts in Doha, alongside the channels run by Egypt’s intelligence service and by Oman. Qatar also promised Iran that Al Udeid Air Base and Qatari airspace would not be used to attack it.

None of that has protected it. Iran has fired missiles and drones at Qatar since the first day of the war, hit Al Udeid on March 3 and struck Ras Laffan on March 18. The reason is that Iran cannot defeat the United States, so it punishes the Gulf. It holds the whole region hostage and does not care which state it hits.

The newest threat is aimed at Qatar’s nervous system. An IRGC spokesman said seven major internet cables run beneath the Strait of Hormuz and could become targets, and Reuters later reported that Iranian officials had drawn up detailed plans to cut Gulf cables if the war resumes. If those cables are cut, Qatar’s banking system, trade and communications are all exposed. Analysts note that Qatar has some land links, but the country would feel the damage first and hardest.

Doha was the only Gulf foreign ministry to answer publicly. On October 20 its spokesman, Ibrahim Al Hashmi, asked Tehran to think about who would suffer: “If someone on the Iranian side reflected honestly on the situation, they would ask: who is the biggest victim?” It would not be the United States across the ocean, or Israel, which takes nothing from Gulf waters. It would be the people of the region, Iranians included. Qatar was telling Iran, in diplomatic language, that enough is enough.

Qatar’s answer to Iranian pressure came on October 21, when it signed the Badr memorandum in Doha with Türkiye (Turkey), Pakistan and Indonesia. The four defence ministries say it covers military production, training, research and development. It is not a mutual-defence treaty. It is a deal to develop, build and buy weapons together.

Qatar chose this rather than joining the Mecca Pact, the mutual-defence treaty that Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed in August. Joining Mecca would put Qatar in a Saudi-led camp facing Iran and end its role as mediator. Egypt has stayed out for similar reasons: a pledge to defend Türkiye could cost it Cyprus and Greece, and a pledge to defend Pakistan could cost it India. Badr gives Qatar partners without enemies.

It also answers a hard lesson. Qatar bought one of the densest air-defence networks in the world for a territory its size, and Iranian drones still got through to its infrastructure. Doha has concluded that buying weapons is not enough. For the first time, it wants to produce them.

Qatar’s economy depends on the Strait of Hormuz because every tonne of its LNG leaves by sea through it. The strait, 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest between Iran and Oman, is the only exit from the Gulf. Before the war, about a fifth of the world’s LNG trade, most of it Qatari, passed through it.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, Qatar has no way around it. Riyadh can pump crude across the kingdom through its East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea, which is why much of Saudi crude kept flowing through the blockade. Kuwait, which recorded zero crude exports in April, is now in talks to link its oil to Saudi and Emirati pipelines and onward through Egypt’s SUMED line. Gas is harder: LNG has to be liquefied at Ras Laffan and loaded on to tankers, and no pipeline can carry Qatar’s volumes to another coast. Exporting through Syria or joining a Saudi network would take years and a political choice Doha has not made.

So when Hormuz closes, Qatar’s income stops. That single fact explains the 42 percent fall, the force majeure notices and the US gas deal. Saudi foresight in building an alternative route is what kept the kingdom out of the Hormuz trap, and Qatar is now paying for not having one.

President Donald Trump said on October 8 that the US would not attack Iran before the midterm elections on November 3. The New York Times has since reported that US and Israeli planners are preparing a short, intense campaign of about three days against Iran’s nuclear sites, energy infrastructure and missile and drone forces. Trump has kept a deal open, but the military option is closer. As soon as the polls close, the United States will strike Iran again.

Israel is pushing hardest. This week dozens of Israeli fighter jets and tankers flew some 800 miles to Iran’s western border and turned back. Israel called it a training exercise, and some US officials suspected it was meant to draw Iranian fire. The driving force is one man: Benjamin Netanyahu wants to fight the same war over again. Haaretz analyst Zvi Bar’el has made the point that the Gulf has no say in this war, which is decided between Netanyahu and Trump, even though Iran has warned that the Gulf will be hit harder and more widely if it is attacked again.

Some analysts argue that Trump is content to see the Gulf states struck because it may push them into the war on his side. That logic fails on its own terms. Every strike weakens them. A Gulf that joins the fight after another round of damage will be less capable, not more, and Qatar, with no pipeline and no second exit, will pay first.

For Egypt, Qatar’s crisis is not distant. About 320,000 Egyptians live and work in Qatar and send home close to $960 million a year, one of the largest Egyptian communities in the Gulf after Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait.

Qatari money is also building Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. Qatari Diar’s Alam El-Roum project, signed in November 2025, is worth an estimated $7.5 billion to Egypt, including $3.5 billion in cash already paid. The money is in, but construction is likely to move more slowly than Egyptian developers expected while Doha tightens spending.