By Benoît Morenne and Collin Eaton
American energy companies are poised to play an even more pivotal role in global flows of liquefied natural gas -- and rake in the profits -- as Iran targets its neighbors' exports.
LNG facilities in Qatar, the second-biggest supplier of LNG globally, are expected to be offline for months -- and won't resume production at prewar levels. National oil company QatarEnergy, which had already declared force majeure earlier this month, said strikes by Iran on Wednesday and Thursday caused extensive damage to its Ras Laffan hub.
A prolonged outage will have major ramifications for energy markets. The stoppage in Qatar means the world is losing nearly 12 billion cubic feet a day of natural-gas supplies, analysts say -- about one-fifth of global LNG supplies. Once the war stops, it will have fewer cargoes from Qatar to heat homes and power industries.
The upshot: The U.S., already the biggest purveyor of cargoes in the world, is set up to log big wins and profits from being a reliable source of cargoes at a time when global inventories are being depleted and buyers are looking down the barrel of a potential monthslong disruption. Although it would take years to build new plants, some companies such as Venture Global have uncontracted volumes that will now fetch much higher prices on the spot market.
Companies are already fielding calls from buyers asking questions about potential new supplies going into the end of the decade. Shares of Venture Global and Cheniere Energy have jumped about 60% and 22%, respectively, since the day before the conflict began.
"With the largest available incremental LNG capacity in the world, the United States will play a critical role during this historic disruption in the market," Venture Global CEO Michael Sabel told investors earlier this month. "Venture Global stands ready to help keep the markets stabilized and supplied."
This is the second time in four years that a massive energy disruption is poised to burnish the U.S's status as an energy superpower. In 2021-2022, Russia cut off more than 10 billion cubic feet a day of natural-gas flows to Europe. The dwindling flows led to a major scramble among Europeans to secure new cargoes from the U.S., crowding out Asian buyers that had no choice but to burn more coal and reduce energy consumption.
Companies such as Venture Global, Cheniere and Sempra greenlighted new multibillion-dollar investments in massive plants and expansions to chill natural gas. The country is currently still building some of these facilities, such as Golden Pass, a long-delayed project developed between Exxon Mobil and QatarEnergy that is set to come online this year. Venture Global sanctioned an expansion project earlier this month at its giant Cameron Parish facility in Louisiana, with $8.6 billion in project financing.
The U.S. exported more than 15 billion cubic feet of LNG a day in 2025, up from 10.2 billion cubic feet a day in 2022, according to the Energy Information Administration. The Trump administration has made boosting these exports a key component of its energy dominance agenda.
There are few alternatives outside the U.S., noted Ben Dell, managing partner of private-equity firm Kimmeridge, considering that Australia, the third-largest LNG producer, is about maxed out and running out of natural gas to feed to its facilities. Dell is chairman of the parent company of Commonwealth LNG, which is developing an LNG facility with the capacity to export at least 9.5 million metric tons per annum.
"There's going to be more momentum behind U.S. LNG projects, for sure," said Massimo Di Odoardo, an analyst at energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
While some LNG executives eye new gains, they are also wary of demand destruction as LNG prices linger at steeply elevated levels, which, taken together with high crude prices, could end up inducing an economic slowdown.
"All energy suffers with softer economic activity," said Steven Miles, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.
QatarEnergy said Thursday that it lost about 17% of its LNG export capacity after the attacks and that it expected repairs would take up to five years. It said it expected to lose about $20 billion a year in revenue, and that the damage would affect supply to markets in Europe and Asia.
It is too early to say just how bad Qatar's outage will be for nations that rely on LNG, executives and analysts say. The expansion in the U.S. means there is more LNG swirling around than just a few years ago; Europe has made a big push on renewables to try to diminish its dependence on fossil fuels, and Asian nations can burn more coal for now to generate power.
Still, the ripple effects of the Iran war are being felt already. Dell said the fossil-fuel shock in the Persian Gulf is poised to lead to shutdowns at refineries and petrochemical complexes in Asia, which in turn will affect the output of products such as plastics.
"I think that's probably another two or three weeks away where we really have a crunch there," he said.
Before the hits on Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG hub, analysts at S&P Global Energy estimated the country wouldn't likely restart the plant until late April, and that it would take about eight weeks to restore full output. The recent strikes suggest a longer restart timeline, with production from the plant constrained until the two damaged liquefaction units can be repaired -- a process that may take several years or more, they said.
Martin Houston, the former executive chairman of U.S. LNG exporter Tellurian, noted that plants require specialized equipment with a long lead time, such as steel that can sustain cryogenic temperatures. "When it comes to specialist parts, there will be some delay," he said.
Ross Wyeno, an analyst at S&P Global Energy, noted that LNG cargoes are moving from the Atlantic basin to Asia to backfill supply, and Asian buyers are swapping cargoes among themselves and trying to increase coal-fired power generation. Taken together, these measures have helped absorb the initial impact of the lost supply.
S&P Global Energy estimates that LNG projects around the world could load more cargoes as a reaction to a tightening market, theoretically adding a maximum of 2.3 million to 2.8 million tons a month from April through June. That wouldn't be nearly enough to cover the roughly 7 million tons Qatar produces every month.
"It's not going to be able to cover a large portion of the overall lost volumes," Wyeno said.
Write to Benoît Morenne at benoit.morenne@wsj.com and Collin Eaton at collin.eaton@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 20, 2026 13:47 ET (17:47 GMT)
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