The World's Biggest Gas Exporter Is Now a Buyer of American Gas

On October 29, QatarEnergy signed a twenty-year deal to buy 3 million tons a year of American liquefied natural gas — LNG, gas chilled to liquid so it can be shipped — from Woodside's Louisiana plant, starting in 2029, layered on an earlier Cheniere contract for 4 million tons a year running into 2054 ^[1][2]. The company signing is the world's largest exporter of LNG. The product it is buying is the product it sells, and the reason it is buying sits a few hundred miles from its own front gate: Iranian missiles struck its Ras Laffan export plant in March, and repairs are estimated to take three to five years ^[3][4]. Its exports are down 96% ^[5]. Qatar is the extreme case, not the exception. Every buyer exposed to the Strait of Hormuz has built its own version of the same chokepoint-proof hedge — and the war is what made each one load-bearing, whether it was signed before the shooting started or after. Qatar's path is worth following in full, because it shows a workaround hardening into strategy. The mid-March strikes removed about 17% of its export capacity for years ^[3][4], while the strait its tankers must cross closed to laden carriers from March 1 to late April ^[6]. Loadings halted, and through August its exports collapsed from 509 cargoes to 18 ^[5]. So the company improvised: it bought 33 spot cargoes from American producers led by Venture Global for about $1 billion, and shipped 28 of them to customers in South Korea, Taiwan, Bangladesh, India and Japan — honoring long-term contracts it could no longer load at home ^[7]. It also switched on its own majority-owned Golden Pass plant in Texas, which shipped its first cargo in April.

This is a significant industry milestone that marks a new chapter in QatarEnergy’s global efforts to meet rising LNG demand and ensure reliable supplies to international markets. — Saad Sherida al-Kaabi

The spot cargoes were a stopgap. The long-term contracts are something else, and al-Kaabi, the chief executive of QatarEnergy, has been explicit about what.

In a scenario where you have a closure of the strait, which is the true contingency that we’re looking to have, you’d immediately see a spike in gas price and you’ll be able to generate revenue for QatarEnergy that otherwise wouldn’t be generated. — Saad Sherida al-Kaabi

That is the reasoning behind a purchase running to 2054 — not filling a hole, but holding a hedge. In India, the telling fact is a date whose meaning changed. In November 2025, before the war, Indian state refiners signed the country's first long-term deal — a term contract locking in supply for years rather than buying shipment by shipment — for American LPG, the liquefied propane and butane used as cooking fuel and feedstock, not the LNG Qatar sells: 2.2 million tons a year, about a tenth of national imports, struck to shrink the US trade surplus and blunt tariffs ^[8]. The oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, marked the occasion.

one of the largest and the world's fastest growing LPG market opens up to the United States — Hardeep Singh Puri

By August the war had changed what the deal was for: the US was supplying 67% of India's LPG, and Qatari gas imports had fallen 91% ^[9]. A tariff bargain had become a lifeline. Italy's Edison tells it as a count and a date. Qatar left 35 cargoes undelivered on one contract covering about a tenth of Italy's gas; Edison replaced 23 of them mostly with American supply ^[5]. Its 15-year deal for US LNG had already been signed the previous September, before the war ^[10] — insurance bought when nobody was looking. Pakistan turned the problem over to the market. After Qatar, its main supplier, declared force majeure — the legal suspension of deliveries — and cancelled a July shipment, Islamabad proposed handing LNG imports to private companies, because the state could no longer guarantee supply ^[11]. South Korea, 70% dependent on Middle Eastern oil, chose geography over Washington: it loaded Saudi crude at Yanbu and sent it around the Red Sea's Bab-el-Mandeb strait rather than through Hormuz, and its foreign minister refused to pay Iran for the privilege ^[12]. The convergence on America is arithmetic, not sentiment. The United States is the only large spare source of gas whose molecules never cross the strait, and the market priced that all year: while Asian gas more than doubled, US Henry Hub futures fell 12% to a 17-month low of $2.52 ^[13]. The hedge has a ceiling, though — American export terminals ran near 94% utilization and could not ship more ^[6]. And the strait itself has stopped being a waterway and become a permission system. Iran's ambassador to Seoul described the new terms ^[14].

The Strait of Hormuz is not closed. — Saeed Koozechi

The buyers did not stumble into this hedge. They priced its risks knowingly, and three of them are already public. Washington has weaponized its own exports once: the Commerce Department temporarily banned ethane shipments to China in a trade dispute ^[15]. The pipeline firm Enterprise Products, which warned against it, was blunt about the damage.

What it has done and where it’s been a problem, you really compromised the U.S. brand for reliable supply and energy security when you just cut off a counterparty like that. — Anthony Chovanec

Second, the hedge is scarce: JERA, Japan's biggest power buyer, warns that a European ban on Russian LNG in January will force Asia and Europe to bid against each other for the same tight American supply ^[5]. Third — and this is what explains why the contracts run decades instead of a season — the strait keeps reopening. On June 17, Washington and Tehran agreed to a memorandum promising 60 days of free passage ^[16]. QatarEnergy extended its force majeure three times after that, in late July, late August and late September ^[5]. A 60-day guarantee failed three times; nobody was going to bet a single season on it. That gap between sixty days and 2054 is the whole story. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made the argument Washington is selling ^[17].

In two years, the Strait of Hormuz will be like a worthless piece of water. — Scott Bessent

On September 20, al-Kaabi rejected it outright ^[17].

If you look at what the trade that we have through the Hormuz Strait, it cannot be obsolete. — Saad Sherida al-Kaabi

His company's contracts say otherwise. Twenty years of American gas, signed while his own plant sits broken, is a bet that the strait stays dangerous — the same future he refuses to concede in public. That is the premium the buyers have accepted. If the strait stabilizes and the glut the industry expects arrives, a contract running to 2054 is expensive insurance. The bets are long because the distrust is long.