Iran War Is Good for America’s Natural Gas Industry
The dashing of Qatar’s clean delivery record has provided one of the biggest tailwinds yet to the young but fast-growing US LNG sector.
Illustration: Ramon Keimig for Bloomberg Businessweek
In 1996 the small Persian Gulf nation of Qatar loaded onto a colossal tanker its inaugural shipment of liquefied natural gas, bound for a power plant in Japan. The next year, the country’s first cargo for Europe set sail. In the three decades since, Qatar’s state-owned energy company has gone on to supply LNG to buyers in more than two dozen countries, from Belgium to Bangladesh, never halting its exports of the superchilled—and superimportant—fuel. Until now.
In addition to the more obvious consequences of US President Donald Trump’s war in Iran—loss of life, geopolitical uncertainty, wild oil-price swings—the expanding Middle East conflict is throwing into question QatarEnergy LNG’s hard-won reputation as the world’s most reliable supplier of the world’s fastest-growing fossil fuel. Even if the disruption proves short-lived, gas importers are realizing they’ve perhaps taken Qatar’s dependability for granted. They’re now clamoring for replacements and scouting out contingency plans—plans that more often than not involve doing more business with the US.