- Two LNG trains and a GTL plant were damaged in Iranian attacks.
- Repairs will equate to 12.8 million tons of LNG annually: al-Kaabi.
- QatarEnergy declares force majeure on long-term contracts.
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 chief executive said. 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 equate to 12.8 million tons of LNG per year 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, attack us in this way,” said Kaabi, who is also Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs.
A few hours earlier, Iran had directed a series of attacks on Gulf oil and gas facilities following Israeli attacks on its own gas infrastructure.
State-owned QatarEnergy will have to declare force majeure on long-term contracts of up to five years for LNG supplies to Italy, Belgium, South Korea and China because of the two damaged trains, Kaabi said.
“I mean, these are long-term contracts that we have to declare force majeure. We have already declared, but it was a shorter term. Now it is regardless of the period,” he said.
ExxonMobil Impact and Byproducts
QatarEnergy had declared force majeure on all its LNG production following earlier attacks on its Ras Laffan production hub, which came under fire again on Wednesday.
“For production to restart, we must first have hostilities cease,” he said.
US oil major ExxonMobil is a partner in the damaged LNG plants, while Shell is a partner in the damaged GTL plant, which will take up to a year to repair.
Texas-based ExxonMobil owns a 34% stake in LNG train S4 and 30% of the S6 train, Kaabi said.
Train S4 affects supplies to Italy’s Edison and EDFT in Belgium, while Train S6 affects South Korea’s KOGAS, EDFT and Shell in China.
The scale of the damage from the attacks has set the region back 10 to 20 years, he said.
“And of course this is a safe haven for a lot of people, to have a safe place to live and so on. And that image, I think, has been shaken.”
The fallout extends far beyond LNG. Qatar’s exports of condensate will fall by around 24%, while liquefied natural gas (LPG) will fall by 13%. Helium production will decrease by 14%, and naphtha and sulfur will both decrease by 6%.
These losses have implications ranging from LPG used in restaurants in India to South Korea’s chipmakers using helium.
The damaged units cost approximately $26 billion to build, Kaabi said.
“If Israel attacked Iran, it is between Iran and Israel. It has nothing to do with us and the region,” he said.
“And so now, beyond that, I’m saying that everybody in the world, whether it’s Israel, whether it’s the United States, whether it’s any other country, everybody should stay away from oil and gas facilities.”
