QatarEnergy has reported more strikes on its LNG infrastructure in the early hours of Thursday, saying on X that “several of its Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facilities were the subject of missile attacks, causing sizeable fires and extensive further damage.”
The company also said emergency response teams were on site to contain the damage.
The latest escalation follows retaliatory strikes by Iran on Qatar and other neighbors after Israel launched missiles at Iranian gas processing infrastructure in the South Pars field, which Iran shares with Qatar. It is the biggest natural gas field in the world.
The Wednesday exchange prompted President Trump to warn Iran not to retaliate further, saying Israel had “lashed out” but will not repeat the strikes if Iran stayed put.
Saudi Arabia, which was among the legitimate retaliation targets announced by Iran on Wednesday, issued its own warning of possible retaliation. “This pressure from Iran will backfire politically and morally, and certainly we reserve the right to take military actions, if deemed necessary,” the kingdom’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told the media.
Gas prices jumped higher on the Wednesday news and will likely continue climbing today following the latest strikes, after Europe’s TTF benchmark added 6% Wednesday, moving closer to 55 euros per megawatt-hour. U.S. gas prices are at $3.164 per mmBtu, up by over 3%.
QatarEnergy earlier this month declared force majeure on its LNG exports following Iran strikes on gas infrastructure. The declaration effectively took a fifth of global LNG production capacity offline, tightening a market that analysts expected to flip into a surplus this year with new plants coming online in the United States later in the year.
The latest developments in gas markets are particularly bad news for European countries, which source most of their gas from abroad and are currently facing depleted storage and the need to buy a lot more gas than last year to replenish that storage.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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