Qatar just shut down all LNG production. The world’s second largest LNG exporter. Gone. Today.
Iranian drones hit Ras Laffan and Mesaieed. QatarEnergy killed the plant. 20% of global LNG supply has disappeared from the market in a single morning.
Now, here is the number nobody is saying out loud.
Restarting liquefaction after a full shutdown takes two weeks minimum. Then another two weeks to reach full capacity. That is a month of the world’s second largest gas exporter running at zero.
Europe is already up 54% on gas prices today.
Asia runs its entire winter heating and manufacturing base on Qatari LNG. Those cargoes are not coming.
And here is what makes this different from every prior Gulf energy shock.
The 2019 Abqaiq attack took out 5.7 million barrels of Saudi oil for a few days. Saudi restored output. The world moved on. Oil fell back.
Qatar cannot restore LNG fast. You cannot flick a switch on a liquefaction train. The equipment has to cool down, be inspected, be brought back online in sequence. A month minimum is not pessimism. It is thermodynamics.
You are not watching an oil shock.
You are watching a structural gas shortage get locked in for four to six weeks at minimum, with a war still running, in the same geography where the infrastructure sits.
Europe thought it had solved its Russian gas dependency. It replaced Russian pipeline gas with Qatari LNG.
Today, Qatari LNG is on the ocean floor of every analyst’s pricing model.
The market has not priced a month of zero.
