Iran attacks wipe out 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity for up to five years, QatarEnergy CEO says
Iranian attacks have knocked out 17% of Qatar’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue and threatening supplies to Europe and Asia, QatarEnergy’s CEO and state minister for energy affairs told Reuters on Thursday.
Saad al-Kaabi said two of Qatar’s 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas-to-liquids (GTL) facilities were damaged in the unprecedented strikes. The repairs will sideline 12.8 million tons per year of LNG for three to five years, he said in an interview.
“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that Qatar would be – Qatar and the region – in such an attack, especially from a brotherly Muslim country in the month of Ramadan, attacking us in this way,” Kaabi said.
Hours earlier Iran had aimed a series of attacks at Gulf oil and gas facilities after Israeli attacks on its own gas infrastructure.
State-owned QatarEnergy will have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts for up to five years for LNG supplies bound for Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China due to the two damaged trains, Kaabi said.
“I mean, these are long-term contracts that we have to declare force majeure. We already declared, but that was a shorter term. Now it’s whatever the period is,” he said.
QatarEnergy had declared force majeure on its entire output of LNG, after earlier attacks on its Ras Laffan production hub, which came under fire again on Wednesday.
“For production to restart, first we need hostilities to cease,” he said. [Continue reading…]
An Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field was coordinated with the Trump administration in advance, according to three Israeli officials, despite President Trump’s assertion that the United States “knew nothing about” it.
Israel has not commented publicly on the attack, carried out on Wednesday, or on Mr. Trump’s effort to distance the United States from it.
But three Israeli officials briefed on the South Pars strike said that the United States was informed before the attack. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“The United States knew nothing about this particular attack,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post late Wednesday, saying that Israel had “violently lashed out.”
He added that Qatar, a U.S. ally, “was in no way, shape or form, involved with it,” nor “had any idea that it was going to happen.” [Continue reading…]