World News: A Global Energy Safety Net Is Unraveling --- The Iran war has hit every node in the supply chain for liquefied natural gas

 

 

“For decades, liquefied natural gas was the global economy's reliable escape valve during energy crises, keeping factories humming and homes warm. Now, LNG has become the battlefield itself.

 

The war in Iran has fractured every node of the regional supply chain. Iran's strikes on Qatar, a top global LNG producer, have damaged the Ras Laffan facility, cutting 17% of its capacity for as long as five years and delaying expansion plans. Tuesday, QatarEnergy declared force majeure on some contracts, including with China, South Korea, Italy and Belgium.

 

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of global LNG, is paralyzed. Even if the U.S. and Iran end the war soon, the consequences for the LNG market will be lasting -- and more profound than for oil, experts say.

 

Unlike crude, the world has no major strategic gas reserve. While some Middle Eastern oil can bypass Hormuz through overland pipelines, Qatari LNG lacks alternative exits. Liquefaction facilities are specialized engineering projects that take years to construct and longer to repair than oil fields. "Even if the war ends overnight, it will take the gas market much longer to return to normal than oil," said Adi Imsirovic, a former energy-trading executive and lecturer at the University of Oxford. "A lot of the slack in the system used to be picked up by LNG, so the knock-on effects are massive."

 

The LNG crunch threatens wealthy nations with a prolonged wave of energy-driven inflation, while forcing fragile emerging economies to ration fuel and shutter factories. It also jeopardizes global crop yields -- gas is a vital fertilizer feedstock -- and could cripple semiconductor production by cutting helium supply, a natural-gas byproduct.

 

This undermines LNG's reputation as a geopolitical safety net. When sanctions on Russia strangled Europe's pipeline supply of gas following the events in Ukraine in 2022, seaborne LNG cargoes swiftly helped fill the void. Following the Fukushima disaster in 2011, LNG shipments absorbed the shock of Japan shutting down its nuclear reactors and kept the power grid running.

 

"This is a directional shift for the gas market: from expecting more supply flexibility over time to confronting tighter balances and greater infrastructure risk," said Jan-Eric Fahnrich, senior analyst at consulting firm Rystad Energy. "What matters now is not only the volume lost, but the precedent set. Once critical Gulf energy infrastructure is seen as vulnerable, buyers will price that risk for longer than the initial outage itself."

 

As a result of the war, the global LNG market is devolving into a zero-sum bidding war, as tankers divert midway through transit to chase higher prices.

 

With Qatari and U.A.E. exports choked off, Europe and Asia must compete for spare capacity from the U.S. and Australia.

 

Some 11 LNG tankers bound for Europe have been diverted to Asia since March 3, according to data provider Kpler. Last week, the La Seine -- a tanker stretching nearly three football fields in length and carrying cargo it had loaded in Plaquemines LNG terminal in Louisiana -- changed course mid-voyage. The tanker headed toward a higher-paying buyer in Asia instead of an import terminal in western France, Kpler data shows.

 

The fallout from the war is disproportionately affecting Asia, Rystad said. China is the largest importer of Qatari LNG, buying one-quarter of its exports, while India imports about 10%. Developing countries in Asia, which get most of their LNG from the Gulf, are in a difficult spot as they are being priced out.

 

"A global gas market that was expected to be oversupplied (and cheap) will now become undersupplied (and expensive)," consulting firm Eurasia Group wrote in a report to clients.

 

Historically a rigid, regional market, LNG transformed over two decades into an interconnected global commodity.

 

Chilled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, natural gas shrinks into a liquid for tanker transport, before being re-gasified at specialized terminals. Its use has boomed, replacing coal and nuclear power in many countries. Shell expects global LNG demand to surge by up to 68% by 2040.

 

But the very engineering that makes LNG transportable makes its infrastructure uniquely fragile.

 

While a damaged oil pipeline or conventional crude well can often be patched or bypassed using standard industrial equipment within weeks, an LNG liquefaction train can't because the extreme temperatures used require bespoke steel, rigorous testing and complex thermal calibration.

 

"You hit something even small, it blows up, and it's really, really hard to repair," said Imsirovic. "It's a nightmare."” [1]

 

We, the Lithuanians, can make out of our LNG terminal a museum of our independence dreams. We should make a museum out of all Lithuania, demonstrating our primitive and militaristic ways of life. The fees could pay for in drone era obsolete German tanks “Leopard” that could be also immediately exhibited. Win-win-win all the way, even when we are not getting the war of our dreams.

 

1. World News: A Global Energy Safety Net Is Unraveling --- The Iran war has hit every node in the supply chain for liquefied natural gas. Kantchev, Georgi.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 26 Mar 2026: A6.