DOHA, October 22 — QatarEnergy has signed two long-term liquefied natural gas supply agreements with the U.S. exporter Cheniere, securing up to 4 million tons per annum of LNG through 2054 in a move that diversifies the Gulf state’s procurement away from a strained Strait of Hormuz corridor.
Under the separate sale-and-purchase agreements announced Thursday, deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2031 and run to the end of 2054. The volumes will be sourced from Cheniere’s Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana and its Corpus Christi plant in Texas, with pricing linked to the U.S. Henry Hub benchmark plus a fixed fee, on a free-on-board basis. QatarEnergy did not disclose the contract value.
The deal arrives as Doha grapples with disrupted domestic production and lost exports. Industry reporting this year has linked damage at the Ras Laffan complex — where two of fourteen LNG trains were knocked out following a March strike — to multi-year capacity outages, while turbulence around the Strait of Hormuz has complicated shipping. The International Monetary Fund this week revised its 2026 forecast for Qatar downward, projecting a 15.6 percent economic contraction, a sharp cut from an earlier 8.6 percent estimate.
Qatar, historically among the world’s top LNG exporters, has spent much of the year backfilling customer commitments through spot purchases, including roughly three dozen U.S. cargoes delivered to Asian buyers over the summer. The new long-term contracts, by contrast, are a structural hedge: they lock in flexible, geographically diversified supply a decade out, rather than addressing near-term shortfalls.
Together with separate advanced talks reported between QatarEnergy and Venture Global for at least 3 million tons per annum, the Cheniere accord underscores how Gulf producers are rewiring global energy supply chains around geopolitical risk.