At least 13 people were killed and 66 were injured after an explosion at Qatar's main liquefied natural gas processing site of Ras Laffan on Sunday, Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Al Kaabi said.
An "operational incident" during the start-up of operations at Ras Laffan Industrial City led to an explosion and fire at the Barzan local gas supply centre on Sunday evening, operator QatarEnergy said.
Ras Laffan, the world's largest LNG refinery, was hit by Iranian missile strikes in March that destroyed parts of the complex. Before the start of the war, the site supplied one fifth of the world's super-chilled fuel.
Qatar's Energy Ministry said in a statement that the plant's export capabilities were unaffected by the blast and there was not risk to the environment.
Authorities said on Sunday that 18 people were missing after the explosion. The Interior Ministry said the Qatar International Search and Rescue Group, along with civil defence teams, had been conducting search operations.
QatarEnergy did not provide details on where in the plant the explosion took place, nor the extent of the damage. But Mr Al Kaabi, who is also chief executive of QatarEnergy, said an investigation into the incident was under way.
The blast was felt across central Doha and caused panic among residents more than 70km from Ras Laffan.
Commissioned in 2022, the Barzan complex supplies pipeline gas domestically. It can provide 1.4 billion standard cubic feet per day of gas to local power generation and water desalination plants, as well as local industries, QatarEnergy says on its website.
Barzan also has the capacity to supply associated hydrocarbon products such as ethane, condensate and sulphur for local markets and export.
Ras Laffan Industrial City, 80km north-east of Doha, is near the North Field. About 115,000 people work at the facility, QatarEnergy's website says.
QatarEnergy said strikes carried out by Iran damaged Trains 4 and 6, removing 12.8 million tonnes a year, equal to about 17 per cent of Qatar's LNG exports from the market, and one of the two trains at the Pearl gas-to-liquids (GTL) complex.
The company at the time said that the affected LNG trains would take three to five years to fully repair and that the Pearl GTL outage would last at least a year.
QatarEnergy declared long-term force majeure on contracts with buyers in China, South Korea, Italy and Belgium. Mr Al Kaabi put annual lost revenue at $20 billion and estimated repairs would take three to five years.
Qatar is the world’s second-largest exporter of LNG, with Asian markets among its main buyers. QatarEnergy has been seeking to restore production at the complex and is expected to boost output once the Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened.
12-week wait
It will take Qatar 12 weeks from June 19 to bring its operational trains back to capacity, according to the base case view of consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
"Using satellite imagery, we have observed heat signals across multiple LNG trains at the North facility at Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex in recent months," said Tom Marzec-Manser, director - Europe gas & LNG at Wood Mackenzie.
"Since the middle of May we have also witnessed heat at the South facility which is where the two trains were damaged."
While a heat signature alone "does not imply outright LNG production", it does show that QatarEnergy is preparing to restart as quickly as possible, he said.
However, shipping will remain the bottleneck, Mr Marzec-Manser said. "Normal transit of the Strait of Hormuz has yet to be resumed and there are only so many vessels that can be loaded at once."
