D 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 CEO told 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 sideline 12.8 million
tons per year of LNG 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,
attacking us in this way,” said Kaabi, who is also Qatar’s
minister of state for energy affairs.
Hours earlier Iran had aimed a series of attacks at Gulf oil
and gas facilities after Israeli attacks on its own gas
infrastructure.
State-owned QatarEnergy will have to declare force majeure
on long-term contracts for up to five years for LNG supplies
bound for Italy, Belgium, South Korea, and China due to the two
damaged trains, Kaabi said.
“I mean, these are long-term contracts that we have to
declare force majeure. We already declared, but that was a
shorter term. Now it’s whatever the period is,” he said.
EXXONMOBIL IMPACT AND BYPRODUCTS
QatarEnergy had declared force majeure on its entire output of
LNG, after earlier attacks on its Ras Laffan production hub,
which came under fire again on Wednesday.
“For production to restart, first we need hostilities to
cease,” he said.
U.S. oil major ExxonMobil is a partner in the damaged
LNG facilities, while Shell is a partner in the damaged
GTL facility, which will take up to a year to repair.
Texas-based ExxonMobil holds a 34% stake in LNG train S4 and
a 30% stake in train S6, Kaabi said.
Train S4 impacts supplies to Italy’s Edison and
EDFT in Belgium, while Train S6 impacts 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 stay and so on. And that image, I think,
has been shaken.”
The fallout extends well beyond LNG. Qatar’s exports of
condensate will drop by around 24%, while liquefied petroleum
gas (LPG) will fall 13%. Helium output will fall 14%, and
naphtha and sulphur will both drop by 6%.
Those losses have implications ranging from LPG used in
restaurants in India to South Korea’s chipmakers which use
helium.
The damaged units cost approximately $26 billion to build,
Kaabi said.
“If Israel attacked Iran, it’s between Iran and Israel. It
has nothing to do with us and the region,” he said.
“And so now, in addition to that, I’m saying that everybody
in the world, whether it’s Israel, whether it’s the U.S.,
whether it’s any other country, everybody should stay away from
oil and gas facilities.”