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Years of repairs loom over Middle East oil and gas facilities after only weeks of hostilities
1/4/2026
News
Damage to oil and gas facilities from the Iran-US/Israel war will take years to repair and cost billions, according to early reports from market analysts Rystad Energy and Wood Mackenzie.
Rystad reports that the greatest damage was inflicted to Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, where the destruction of LNG trains S4 and S6 has triggered force majeure and a 17% capacity reduction, equivalent to about 12.8mn t/y. It points out that the work will take years to complete, partly because the suppliers of the large-frame gas turbines were quoting backlogs of two to four years at the start of 2026.
‘For production to restart, first we need hostilities to cease,’ said QatarEnergy’s CEO and State Minister for Energy Affairs Saad al-Kaabi, quoted in Hydrocarbon Processing.
At Bahrain’s Sitra refinery, two crude distillation units and a tank farm were damaged – one of which had only just been commissioned months before as part of a $7bn upgrade – again creating a force majeure claim across the site.
‘Restoring the units will likely require international contractors to be re-mobilised at conflict-inflated costs and under uncertain war-risk insurance, as the damaged assets had only recently come online,’ said Rystad.
Rystad estimates the total costs at $25bn, but warns that they are likely to rise with further inspections.
One of two trains at the Pearl gas-to-liquids (GTL) site in Qatar was also damaged. New Energy World understands that damage is in the air separation units (ASUs), which separate oxygen from the air to feed the gasifiers, and repair will take one to two years.
Construction work in the planned 32mn t/y North Field East expansion has halted, pushing completion past the previous estimate of 2027, according to a report by Wood Mackenzie.
Bloomberg reported that damage to Iran’s South Pars offshore gas field has stopped the country exporting gas to Türkiye.
The halt of Qatari LNG production in early March has stopped about 19% of the world’s LNG, 80mn t/y, according to Wood Mackenzie. It says that the disruption is globally significant. ‘With Qatar producing an average of 6.7mn tonnes per month in 2025, a disruption lasting five to six months would push annual global supply into year-on-year decline,’ said Wood Mackenzie Global LNG Research Director Daniel Toleman.
The market analyst predicts that Asian customers, including in Bangladesh, India and Taiwan, are most likely to be affected.
