Ras Laffan's Five-Year Repair Window Points to Sustained Gains in US LNG Export Flows
Iranian attacks have taken 17% of Ras Laffan's LNG capacity offline for up to five years, intensifying demand for US export cargoes.
The NYMEX Henry Hub July contract shed 11.2 cents, or 3.35%, on Friday (2026-06-26), as longs unwound positions on the final day of trading and pushed the front-month settle to $3.23 per MMBtu. Barchart attributed the move to expiry-driven long liquidation rather than any deterioration in the underlying supply picture.5
That underlying picture remains mixed. Lower-48 dry gas production reached 112.5 billion cubic feet per day on Friday (2026-06-26), up 4.7% year-on-year, according to BNEF. Domestic demand stood at 71.2 bcf/day, down 7.0% year-on-year, and the Edison Electric Institute reported on Wednesday (2026-06-24) that US electricity output in the week ended June 20 (2026-06-20) fell 2.17% year-on-year to 89,351 gigawatt-hours. Both figures signal soft near-term gas burn.5
Storage backs that reading. Natural gas inventories as of June 19 (2026-06-19) sat 5.7% above the five-year seasonal average, signaling adequate supply without much cushion against demand surprises, even as they ran 2.2% below the prior year.5
Against that bearish near-term backdrop, Qatar confirmed a disruptive development with a much longer time horizon. Iranian attacks on the Ras Laffan industrial complex damaged 17% of the facility's LNG export capacity, and Qatar said repairs will take three to five years. Ras Laffan processes roughly 20% of global LNG supply.5 The facility had been operating at reduced capacity since earlier damage this year, FX Empire reported, meaning the announced repair timeline extends an outage that has already run for months.2
Alternative LNG suppliers would struggle to cover a curtailment of that scale over a three-to-five-year window. Asian and European buyers have been competing for replacement volumes since the Strait of Hormuz closed on February 28 (2026-02-28), driving European and Asian gas prices sharply above US benchmarks.4 JKM, the Asian LNG benchmark, settled at $15.52 per MMBtu as of Friday's (2026-06-26) close. NYMEX Henry Hub front-month settled at $3.23 per MMBtu on the same day, with the wide spread between the two benchmarks pulling Atlantic-basin supply toward Asian buyers.5
The direction of feedgas flows confirms US terminals are capturing displacement demand. LNG net flows into US export facilities on Friday (2026-06-26) reached 19.1 bcf/day, 4.5% higher week-on-week, according to BNEF.5 The EIA forecast lower-48 marketed gas production growing 3% in 2026 versus 2025, with Permian output projected at 29.2 bcf/day, up 6% from 2025 levels, and Haynesville production expected to grow 6% this year and 8% next year.1 That production growth provides the domestic feedgas base from which export expansion draws.
Near-term weather introduces a demand variable on the other side. The Commodity Weather Group said on Friday (2026-06-26) that above-average temperatures are forecast across the Midwest and Northeast through July 5 (2026-07-05), a pattern that would push power-burn demand higher through that period and counteract some of the pressure from large storage builds.5
The longer-run price outlook splits analysts. Morgan Stanley projected Henry Hub could reach $5 per MMBtu, well above the EIA's baseline of just under $3.50.3 The difference turns on how quickly long-term US LNG off-take agreements materialize. Each contract signed by an Asian or European buyer locks in a tranche of domestic feedgas demand that production growth would otherwise flow into storage. Until those commitments emerge, the JKM premium will keep pulling spot cargoes eastward, steadily tightening the domestic supply-demand balance in a way that the current storage surplus does not yet reflect.5