The attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility, caused global oil and gas prices to soar on Thursday, and stoked concerns that the war in the Middle East is set to deepen a global energy crisis.
Officials in Qatar, a major energy supplier, blamed Iran for the attack, which came after an Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars offshore gas field.
The extent of the damage was not clear but the attack has spooked investors, and analysts warned that it could take months to repair.
Here is what to know about Ras Laffan and why the threat to Qatar’s energy infrastructure is having a global impact.
How important is Ras Laffan?
The Ras Laffan complex is the heart of Qatar’s natural gas processing operations.
The facility is approximately a third of the size of New York City and was built 30 years ago about 50 miles from the capital, Doha. It accounts for roughly a fifth of the global supply of liquefied natural gas.
Qatar is the world’s third-largest exporter of L.N.G., and has made hundreds of billions of dollars from the industry over decades, helping to turn itself into a global energy superpower.
Most of Qatar’s natural gas comes from the North Dome field, which is part of the world’s largest offshore natural gas reservoir. Qatar shares the field with Iran.
How will the damage hit the global energy market?
Qatar is a major supplier to Europe and Asia, and the attack sent European natural gas prices surging by as much as 30 percent on Thursday.
Qatar had stopped exporting L.N.G. earlier in the war, which was sparked by Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran, and some analysts worry that the disruption to Ras Laffan mean resuming the trade could take months once the conflict ends.
“The issue of taking out an L.N.G. terminal is they take a while to repair,” said Sarah Emerson, an energy analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “This is not a simple facility to replace.”
“This is potentially a really significant disruption to the global natural gas market,” she added. “There’s a lot of countries that export a little, there aren’t that many countries that export a lot.”
The United States is the world’s biggest L.N.G. exporter, but it has maxed out its capacity on what it can sell overseas, Ms. Emerson said.
Is this a new front?
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers for several Arab and Muslim countries condemned the “deliberate” Iranian attacks on civilian infrastructure, including “oil facilities, desalination plants, airports, residential buildings, and diplomatic premises.”
Iran is following through on its threats to strike the energy infrastructure of American allies in the Persian Gulf if its energy sites are targeted, said Justin Dargin, a nonresident senior fellow at the Middle East Council of Global Affairs, a Doha-based think tank.
More of these types of attacks are part of Iran’s strategy to inflict pain on the Gulf countries and persuade them to pressure the U.S. and Israel to “wrap this war up,” he said.
If more of Iran’s energy infrastructure is attacked, Mr. Dargin added, “Iran will start to target more of the backbone of energy facilities in the Gulf region.”
Raja Abdulrahim reports on the Middle East and is based in Jerusalem.
The post Why Iran’s Attack on an Energy Hub in Qatar Spooked Investors appeared first on New York Times.
