Qatar's statement on Middle East situation to inflate gas prices

Baku/12.10.23/Turan: Qatar has announced that it will stop supplying liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe if the bombing of Gaza does not stop, the world media reports.

Qatar is among the top 5 global gas suppliers, producing 77 million tons of LNG per year and planning to raise this figure to 126 million tons/year by 2027.

Owing to the Middle East crisis, the gas price in Europe is already approaching $600 per 1,000 cubic meters, which is twice as much as summer prices and worries the EU, in which the heating season began on October 1.

According to the results of the second quarter of 2023, a share of LNG from Qatar in the EU market was 10% (lost to the USA and the Russian Federation), but in the autumn Qatar signed several major contracts, including two agreements with "TotalEnergies" (delivery to France from 2026 for 27 years to 3.5 million tons of LNG per year).

As an expert on gas issues explained to Turan, "due to Israel's bombing of targets in Gaza, Qatar may stop selling gas on the spot market, on European gas exchanges, but will not violate the terms of numerous long-term contracts (from 15 years to 27 years) with leading European states (Germany, Italy, France and etc.)".

"Qatar's statement is now more political in nature," the expert noted.

He recalled that until 2023, the United States, Qatar and Australia together accounted for about 60% of global LNG exports, but now the United States is trying to squeeze competitors out of the European market.

Interestingly, two former senior US security officials (Mark Wallace and Francis Townsend) on October 11 in an interview with the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) said that the head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, had been granted asylum in Doha, and the Qatari authorities should extradite him to the US or Israel.

According to the WSJ, which has not been officially confirmed, Haniyeh allegedly led a Hamas strike on Israel from Doha over the weekend.

It has to be in mind that Qatar is close to Iran and the Russian Federation, and in the summer it did not rule out that it could join the project to create a gas hub in the Asaluye industrial district of Bushehr province on the Persian Gulf coast.

Yesterday, as part of the Russian energy week, Russian President Vladimir Putin actually reaffirmed the failure of US policy in the Middle East.—0—