Gas Prices in Asia and Europe Rise on Qatar LNG Disruption

Gas prices in Asia climbed sharply this week, with spot LNG touching $23.388 per million British thermal units on Friday, as Qatar extended a force majeure on its liquefied natural gas deliveries through early November. The move keeps a key supply artery pinched just as colder months approach.

Why Gas Prices Asia Wide Are Climbing

The spike traces back to blocked transits through the Strait of Hormuz, a bottleneck that has kept Qatari term cargoes off the market since fighting between Iran and Israel began. Asian utilities have compounded the squeeze by outbidding European buyers for whatever LNG is still reaching the region, drawing from an already thin pool of Middle East cargoes that other exporters cannot fully replace. The result: Asian spot prices have sat near four year highs for much of this week.

Europe Feels the Same Pinch

European buyers are contending with a parallel squeeze. The Dutch Title Transfer Facility benchmark rose 2% in Amsterdam trading, pushing past $80, or roughly 69 euros, per megawatt hour, its highest since 2023. European gas storage sites are only about 63% full heading into winter, well below the five year average near 80%. Summer heatwaves drove up electricity demand even as storage refilling competed for scarce cargoes, and Qatar's stranded shipments have made the shortfall worse.

Why Qatar's Force Majeure Matters So Much

QatarEnergy's extension of its force majeure, now stretching from October into early November, signals that the disruption at Hormuz is not a brief hiccup. Unlike crude oil, which producers have managed to reroute through ship to ship transfers after clearing the strait, LNG cannot be handled that way. Oil flows through Hormuz have reportedly rebounded in recent weeks, with Qatar and Kuwait said to have restored around 70% of pre war export volumes, but LNG traffic remains essentially frozen. That distinction explains why gas markets are reacting so differently from oil markets to the same geopolitical flashpoint.

What the Broader Energy Complex Shows

Domestic natural gas exposure looks calmer by comparison. The United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) traded at $10.32, down 1.15% on the day, within a 52 week range of $9.54 to $12.11 and an RSI of 52.77, a neutral reading that suggests no strong momentum in either direction. That contrast underscores how the current squeeze is concentrated in seaborne LNG routes tied to the Persian Gulf rather than in broader North American gas fundamentals.

How Long Hormuz Bottleneck Could Persist

With Qatar's force majeure now extending nearly to winter's doorstep, the timeline for resolving the LNG bottleneck hinges on when shipping through Hormuz normalizes for gas carriers the way it has for oil tankers. Until that happens, Asian and European buyers will keep competing for the same shrinking pool of cargoes, and prices in both regions are likely to stay elevated.