Energy prices soar, Iran and US trade threats after Qatar gas hit

Oil and gas prices soared Thursday after Iran hit the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Qatar and threatened to destroy the region’s energy infrastructure, and Donald Trump warned of a furious US response if such attacks continued. International benchmark Brent surged 10 percent before falling back while European gas rose 35 percent after Iran attacked Qatar’s huge Ras Laffan LNG facility in retaliation for an Israeli strike on its South Pars gas field. Trump, whose country started the war alongside Israel with their attack on Iran on February 28, said Washington did not know about the strike on South Pars.

But he warned the United States would itself “blow up” the Iranian gas field if Tehran did not stop attacking Qatar. Iran’s military responded Thursday with defiance, saying it had been a “major mistake” to hit South Pars, which supplies around 70 percent of the country’s domestic natural gas. “If it is repeated, subsequent attacks against your energy infrastructure and that of your allies will not stop until their complete destruction, and our response will be far more severe,” operational command Khatam Al-Anbiya said in a statement carried by Fars news agency.

Qatar is one of the world’s top liquefied natural gas producers, alongside the United States, Australia and Russia, and its Ras Laffan facility is the world’s largest LNG hub. It has been repeatedly targeted by Iran since the war began, and state-run QatarEnergy said Thursday that two waves of Iranian strikes had caused “sizeable fires and extensive further damage” to several LNG facilities. Energy prices had already spiralled since tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG, was brought to a near standstill by the threat of Iranian attacks. But analysts said the targeting of energy production facilities, not just storage depots and transport, is on a different scale.