Qatar said strikes on Ras Laffan Industrial City damaged key gas facilities, cut the country’s liquefied natural gas export capacity by about 17%, and could cost an estimated $20 billion a year in lost revenue.
In a statement released Thursday, QatarEnergy said the attacks hit Ras Laffan on Wednesday, March 18, 2026, and again in the early hours of Thursday, March 19, 2026. Repair work could take up to five years, the company said, adding that the timeline may force it to declare long-term force majeure on some LNG contracts.
Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs and the president and CEO of QatarEnergy, said the damage would affect supply to markets in Europe and Asia, including China, South Korea, Italy, and Belgium.
QatarEnergy said the strikes damaged LNG Trains 4 and 6, which together produce 12.8 million tons per annum. The company said that equals roughly 17% of Qatar’s LNG exports. Train 4 is a joint venture between QatarEnergy and ExxonMobil, while Train 6 is also jointly owned by the two companies.
Al-Kaabi said the LNG facilities would take between three and five years to repair. He said the scale of the damage means QatarEnergy expects to declare force majeure for as long as five years on some long-term LNG supply contracts.
The strikes also targeted the Pearl GTL facility, a production-sharing operation run by Shell that converts natural gas into liquid fuels and other petroleum products. Al-Kaabi said damage to one of Pearl GTL’s two trains is still being assessed, but the unit is expected to remain offline for at least one year.
QatarEnergy said the outage would also cut production of other export products. The company listed expected losses of 18.6 million barrels of condensates, 1.281 million tons of LPG, 0.594 million tons of naphtha, 0.18 million tons of sulfur, and 309.54 MCFA of helium, using the company’s stated measurement.
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