This is huge! Expect other Middle Eastern countries to begin doing the same!
BREAKING: Qatar is set to fully shut natural gas liquefaction today, two sources close to the matter say.
Restarting natural gas liquefaction after a complete shutdown would take 2 weeks.
Once restarted, Qatar would need at least another 2 weeks to reach full capacity.
Qatar… pic.twitter.com/YzLCXVpQ53
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) March 4, 2026
QATAR TO FULLY SHUT GAS LIQUEFACTION ON WEDNESDAY, TWO SOURCES CLOSE TO MATTER SAY
QATAR WOULD NEED 2 WEEKS TO RESTART GAS LIQUEFACTION AFTER FULL SHUTDOWN, SOURCES SAY, CITING INITIAL ESTIMATES
ONCE RESTARTED, QATAR WOULD NEED AT LEAST ANOTHER 2 WEEKS TO REACH FULL CAPACITY,…
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) March 4, 2026
BREAKING: Qatar just shut down all LNG production.
The world’s second largest LNG exporter. Gone. Today.
Iranian drones hit Ras Laffan and Mesaieed. QatarEnergy killed the plant. 20% of global LNG supply has disappeared from the market in a single morning.
Now here is the number nobody is saying out loud.
Restarting liquefaction after a full shutdown takes two weeks minimum. Then another two weeks to reach full capacity. That is a month of the world’s second largest gas exporter running at zero.
Europe is already up 54% on gas prices today.
Asia runs its entire winter heating and manufacturing base on Qatari LNG. Those cargoes are not coming.
And here is what makes this different from every prior Gulf energy shock.
The 2019 Abqaiq attack took out 5.7 million barrels of Saudi oil for a few days. Saudi restored output. The world moved on. Oil fell back.
Qatar cannot restore LNG fast. You cannot flick a switch on a liquefaction train. The equipment has to cool down, be inspected, be brought back online in sequence. A month minimum is not pessimism. It is thermodynamics.
You are not watching an oil shock.
You are watching a structural gas shortage get locked in for four to six weeks at minimum, with a war still running, in the same geography where the infrastructure sits.
Europe thought it had solved its Russian gas dependency. It replaced Russian pipeline gas with Qatari LNG.
Today, Qatari LNG is on the ocean floor of every analyst’s pricing model.
The market has not priced a month of zero.
BREAKING: QatarEnergy just declared Force Majeure.
Three words that mean: we cannot deliver, and legally, we do not have to.
This is no longer a supply disruption. This is a contract collapse.
Force Majeure is not a precaution. It is a formal legal declaration that an… https://t.co/4DBcRWrv7p pic.twitter.com/iMNUjwUX1G
— Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ (@shanaka86) March 4, 2026