QatarEnergy is ready to restart liquefied natural gas production at the Ras Laffan plant very quickly and could reach full output of facilities unaffected by Iranian strikes within a month, a person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. The signal arrives as the framework agreement between Washington and Tehran moves the Strait of Hormuz toward reopening.
Two of Qatar's 14 LNG trains and one of its two gas to liquids facilities were knocked out during the war, removing roughly 17% of the country's LNG export capacity. The group's chief executive told Reuters in March that those damaged units will take years to repair.
Production at the remaining facilities, which had been idled because of the de facto closure of the Hormuz export gateway, could be brought back quickly, the source said. "The problem will be how fast can we bring ships in and how fast we can load them after the strait opens," the person said. "It is more of a shipping and logistics problem than production."
Just over a dozen LNG tankers have managed to exit the strait since the war began in late February, according to Reuters. Shippers are still waiting for safety assurances, including confirmation that mines laid during the conflict have been cleared, a process that could push a return to normal traffic out by weeks.
Qatar supplies roughly a fifth of global LNG, and any prolonged outage at Ras Laffan tightens an already stressed market for European and Asian buyers that pivoted toward Gulf cargoes after Russian pipeline gas was cut. A faster restart at the undamaged trains would ease price pressure, but operators across the Gulf are watching mine clearance timelines as the gating factor.