European gas prices jump 35% after Iran hits key Ras Laffan LNG plant in Qatar

European natural gas prices jumped after Iran intensified attacks to energy infrastructure in the Gulf.

European natural gas prices jumped after Iran intensified attacks to energy infrastructure in the Gulf, causing damage to the world’s largest liquefied natural gas export plant. Track live updates on Middle East crisis

File photo of Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar's principal site for production of liquefied natural gas and gas-to-liquid. (AFP)

Benchmark futures rose as much as 35% on Thursday.

Qatar Energy’s Ras Laffan suffered “extensive damage” after a series of attacks, causing sizable fires, the company confirmed. The plant typically produces about a fifth of global supply and while shipments had already been halted earlier this month due to the war, the latest strikes threaten to keep gas prices in Europe and Asia higher for longer.

Abu Dhabi’s Habshan gas facilities were also shut after they were hit by falling debris from an intercepted strike. President Donald Trump said in a social media post the US will retaliate if Qatar’s LNG facilities were attacked again.

Full details of the extent of the damage and the time line for repairs aren’t yet known. While Asian countries buy most of the LNG shipped from the Middle East, any prolonged disruption to flows would shrink the global supply balance — keeping prices elevated worldwide.

For Europe, in particular, the escalation comes at a tricky time as the region is emerging from winter with storage tanks depleted. That means it will have to buy more LNG cargoes this summer to refill them, vying with buyers from Asia for less available supplies.

“LNG from Qatar could in principle be offline for months and, in the worst case, for years,” said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst at Global Risk Management. “For the gas market, the crisis does not end simply because the war ends and the Strait of Hormuz reopens.”

The Ras Laffan plant closed earlier this month after an Iranian drone attack, the first interruption to supply in three decades of operation. Now, after further hits — in retaliation for an Israeli strike on the vast South Pars fields on Wednesday — the wider complex has suffered what Qatar describes as extensive damage, pushing back the prospect of a return to normality.

Dutch front-month futures, Europe’s gas benchmark, rose 30.76% to €71.47 a megawatt-hour at 8:02 a.m. in Amsterdam.