LNG Equipment Suppliers Bet on 8.2% Annual Growth as Hormuz Closure Splits Global Gas Prices

LNG Equipment Suppliers Bet on 8.2% Annual Growth as Hormuz Closure Splits Global Gas Prices Future Market Insights projects LNG liquefaction equipment demand growing 8.2% a year through 2035, a decade-long thesis colliding with an acute supply shock that has split global gas prices. Future Market Insights said on Friday (2026-05-29) that the global market for LNG liquefaction equipment will grow at 8.2% a year through 2035, with Asia-Pacific and North America driving the bulk of new infrastructure spending.⁴ The forecast lands at an awkward moment. Equipment makers are selling compressors and cooling trains on a decade-long demand story, yet the LNG market they serve is in the middle of an acute supply shock that has nothing to do with new capacity and everything to do with one waterway.^4,2 Since the February 28 closure of the Strait of Hormuz, European and Asian gas prices have pulled sharply away from the United States, according to EIA. The closure removed more than 10 billion cubic feet per day of global LNG supply, roughly 20%, most of it Qatari volume from the Ras Laffan export complex.² The price split is stark. EIA data showed TTF, the European benchmark, rose 35% from before the closure in the week ending April 24 (2026-04-24), while Henry Hub fell 9% over the same span on limited near-term export capacity and ample domestic storage.² ICE Endex TTF front-month traded around €46.62 in Friday (2026-06-12) trade, with NYMEX Henry Hub front-month near $3.11.² That divergence is the equipment thesis in miniature. The case for building liquefaction capacity in North America rests on exactly this kind of arbitrage, where US gas trades at a fraction of delivered prices in Europe and Asia. EIA put US export terminal utilisation at 94% of maximum DOE-approved levels in March, meaning the existing fleet is already running close to flat out.² But the same shock that widens the arb also exposes the lag. New trains take years to commission, and the Hormuz disruption is a near-term problem that compressors ordered now cannot solve. Henry Hub slipping despite record-wide spreads points to the bottleneck being export capacity, not wellhead supply.^2,4 Asian buyers are feeling it most. A Nigerian LNG cargo originally bound for Europe was diverted to Asia after a surge in Asian prices opened a profitable arbitrage, according to Kpler principal insight analyst Go Katayama, who said the move reflected a widening gap between Atlantic and Pacific markets.³ Spark Commodities analyst Qasim Afghan said front-month arbitrage opportunities had increased significantly and now favoured Asian buyers across several major routes.³ JKM, the Asian LNG marker, traded around $18.85 in Friday (2026-06-12) trade.³ One diverted tanker is not a trend, and the analysts cited framed it as a single observed cargo rather than a flood. Still, the direction matches the price signal: cargoes chase the Pacific premium, and Europe competes harder for what is left.³ The geopolitical overhang is the variable the equipment forecast cannot price. Analysts attributed the squeeze to tensions between the United States and Iran alongside a temporary production suspension in Qatar, two factors that tightened the market quickly.³ Wood Mackenzie warned that an extended disruption from a prolonged Iran war could have severe consequences for the global LNG market.¹ For equipment suppliers, geopolitics cuts both ways. A prolonged outage hardens the long-run argument for diversified liquefaction away from the Gulf, which is the demand the 8.2% forecast is built on. A swift reopening of Hormuz and a return of Qatari volume would collapse the spreads now driving the urgency.^4,2 What the Future Market Insights report sells is reliability and scalability in compression technology, the unglamorous hardware that determines how fast new capacity can come online. That pitch only matters if the buyers building terminals believe current price gaps will persist long enough to pay back the steel.⁴ The next signal is whether Qatari volume from Ras Laffan returns and how quickly. Until it does, the spread between TTF and Henry Hub is doing the work that no amount of new equipment can do on a 2035 timeline, and every cargo that turns east widens the gap the suppliers are counting on.^2,3