Qatar warns Middle East war will force Gulf to stop energy exports within days

In the control rooms of Ras Laffan, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, the screens flickered to red early this week. Not because of a systems failure, but because the sky above the Qatari desert was no longer safe. When Iranian drones struck the heart of the global gas trade on Monday, they did more than damage infrastructure; they triggered a chain reaction that, according to Doha’s top energy official, will force every Gulf state to halt energy exports within days if the US-Israel war with Iran continues.

In an interview with the Financial Times that sent shockwaves through trading floors from London to Singapore, Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs, Saad al-Kaabi, delivered a stark ultimatum from the Gulf. “Everybody that has not called for force majeure we expect will do so in the next few days that this continues,” Kaabi warned. “All exporters in the Gulf region will have to call force majeure.”

The statement, parsed by every energy analyst and diplomat in real-time, confirms what many feared: the conflict has moved beyond a regional skirmish and into a direct assault on the arteries of the global economy. Here is the inside story of how the Gulf’s energy tap is being turned off, why it will take months to turn back on, and what it means for your heating bill, your factory’s supply chain, and the geopolitical order.

The Hormuz Chokepoint: Twenty Percent of Supply Goes Dark

To understand the gravity of the warning, one must look at a map. The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway flanked by Iran and Oman, is the only sea passage for Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the majority of Saudi and Iraqi oil exports. About a fifth of the world’s total oil supply—roughly 20 million barrels per day—usually flows through this channel, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Since the outbreak of hostilities last weekend, that flow has all but ceased. No LNG vessels have transited the Strait of Hormuz since Saturday, effectively cutting off around 20% of global LNG supply. It is not a formal blockade by Tehran, but a de facto one driven by self-preservation. Insurers have hiked premiums to astronomical levels, and shipowners are refusing to risk crews and vessels through waters where at least 10 ships have already been attacked.

Kaabi put a fine point on the arithmetic of risk. “From the way we’ve seen attacks, putting vessels into the Strait… is very dangerous. It’s very close to the coast, it’s very hard to convince shipowners to go in there,” he explained. The result is a logjam. LNG carriers and oil tankers are anchored, fully laden but unable to move.

The “Force Majeure” Domino Effect

On Monday, Qatar made the first move. QatarEnergy, the state-owned giant, declared force majeure on its LNG exports. This legal clause, which frees a company from liability due to extraordinary events, was triggered after Iran targeted the Ras Laffan facility, forcing an emergency shutdown. The company also halted production across its chemical, petrochemical and downstream operations, including urea, polymers and methanol.

Gulf Exporter	Status of Exports	Key Vulnerability
Qatar	Halted (Force Majeure)	100% of LNG exports via Hormuz; Ras Laffan plant directly attacked.
Iraq	Partial Halt	Storage tanks full at major oil fields; exports suspended via Kurdistan-Turkey pipeline.
Kuwait	Imminent Halt	100% of oil exports via Hormuz; no alternative pipeline routes.
Saudi Arabia	Disrupted	Ras Tanura refinery hit; limited pipeline capacity to Red Sea (Abqaiq-Yanbu).
UAE	Disrupted	Partial pipeline capacity to Fujairah (bypassing Hormuz), but shipping risks persist.

But the key detail in Kaabi’s warning is the inevitability of the spread. Iraq has already begun halting operations at its largest oil fields because storage tanks are full; with nowhere for the crude to go, production must stop. Kuwait and Bahrain, which have no pipeline alternatives, face an immediate existential choice: keep producing and risk running out of storage, or shut in wells and declare force majeure themselves.

“If this war continues for a few weeks, GDP growth around the world will be impacted,” Kaabi told the FT. “Everybody’s energy price is going to go higher. There will be shortages of some products and there will be a chain reaction of factories that cannot supply.”

The Price Spike: From $89 to $150

The markets, often slow to price in geopolitical risk, have finally awakened. Brent crude broke above $90 per barrel on Friday after President Donald Trump demanded unconditional surrender from Iran, but this is merely the opening act. Kaabi predicted that if the Hormuz shutdown persists for two to three weeks, crude will soar to $150 a barrel—levels not seen since the 2022 energy crisis.

Natural gas is facing an even more violent correction. European benchmark TTF futures surged nearly 50% in the days following the attack, hitting multi-year highs. Kaabi forecasts gas prices will hit $40 per million British thermal units (MMBtu)—a fourfold increase from pre-war levels. For context, Goldman Sachs warned that a month-long halt to flows through Hormuz risks driving TTF prices toward levels that “triggered large natural gas demand responses” during the 2022 European energy crisis, forcing fertilizer plants in Germany to close and petrochemical makers in South Korea to slash output.

Asia versus Europe: The Scramble for Scraps

The disruption exposes a critical imbalance in global energy security. While Qatar supplies only a small fraction of Europe’s gas directly, it dominates the Asian market, with over 80% of its LNG going to China, Japan, India, and South Korea. According to the EIA, approximately 84% of crude oil and condensate shipments transiting the Strait of Hormuz in 2024 were headed to Asian markets, with China, India, Japan and South Korea accounting for a combined 69% of all flows.

Here is the brutal physics of the global gas market: if Asian buyers cannot get their contracted Qatari cargoes, they will outbid Europe for every available molecule of LNG from the US or Africa. Europe is entering this bidding war from a position of weakness. The continent’s gas storage sites are at around 30% full, well below the 62% level recorded at the same point in 2024, and it desperately needs to refill them before next winter.

The Brussels-based think tank Bruegel highlighted that Europe would be “forced to compete with Asian buyers for flexible cargoes on the spot market”—something not seen since the 2021–2023 energy crisis. With the Red Sea already too dangerous for Qatari tankers since January, the closure of Hormuz means the Middle East is effectively offline. Europe is now in a bidding war for Atlantic supplies that simply do not exist in sufficient quantity.

The “Weeks to Months” Recovery

Perhaps the most chilling part of Kaabi’s analysis was reserved for the aftermath. Even if the guns fall silent tomorrow, the energy crisis will not.

Shutting down a liquefaction plant is not like flipping a light switch. It is a delicate, dangerous process of cooling equipment down to prevent thermal shock. Restarting is even harder. Once the process begins, it takes about two weeks to bring the plant back online and another two weeks to ramp up to full capacity.

“It will take ‘weeks to months’ to return to a normal cycle of deliveries,” Kaabi admitted. Furthermore, the $30 billion North Field expansion project—the lynchpin of future global gas supply scheduled to come online in mid-2026—will now be delayed. “It will delay all our expansion plans for sure,” Kaabi said. “If we come back in a week, perhaps the effect is minimal; if it’s a month or two, it is different.”

The View from Washington and Tehran

The Trump administration is watching with alarm. President Donald Trump has promised that the US Navy will escort tankers and provide insurance guarantees. But in practice, as Kaabi noted, “Most shipowners will think they are going to be a bigger target because the Iranians are targeting warships.” The promise of a naval escort may actually increase the perceived risk for commercial vessels.

On the other side, a senior adviser to the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told state television that Iranian forces “won’t allow a single drop of oil to leave the region”. With Iranian state media boasting of their resolve, the prospects for a rapid diplomatic solution appear dim.

The Human and Industrial Toll

Beyond the headlines of barrels and BTUs, this is a story about jobs and heating bills. A sustained oil price spike translates directly to pain at the pump—retail gasoline in the US has already jumped nearly 27 cents per gallon since the conflict began. In Europe, it reignites inflation just as central banks were hoping to declare victory.

For industry, the halt in Gulf exports is about raw materials. The Gulf produces much of the world’s naphtha (for plastics) and feedstocks for fertilizers. “In certain industrial sectors, particularly chemicals, the conflict is already leading to a slowdown in production,” with companies preferring to reduce output rather than buy energy at these prices. “There will be a chain reaction of factories that cannot supply,” Kaabi warned. We are looking at potential supply chain disruptions that rival the pandemic-era logjams, but this time driven by a lack of energy, not a lack of containers.

Conclusion: The Clock is Ticking

The warning from Doha is not a threat; it is a physics lesson. You cannot export what you cannot ship. You cannot ship through a war zone. And you cannot restart a complex energy system overnight.

Qatar has effectively told the world that the era of cheap, reliable Gulf energy is on pause until the shooting stops. If the conflict drags into next week, the force majeure declarations will cascade. By all analyst projections, the global economy faces an energy shock that rivals the worst supply disruptions in modern history. The only question remaining is whether diplomats in Washington and Tehran are listening to the clock ticking in Doha before it strikes zero.