Qatar’s LNG is crossing Hormuz again, but the supply squeeze isn’t over

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

TODAY: Is Qatar’s LNG supply recovering, or is Hormuz masking a deeper squeeze?

Good morning, ladies and gents. It’s a calm morning on the war front, a busy one everywhere else.

Qatar is moving LNG again — but don't call it a restart just yet. A Qatari cargo reached Pakistan last week after becoming the first known LNG shipment from the country to cross Hormuz since July, and several empty Qatar-linked tankers have moved back toward the Gulf too. Still, treat these as exceptions: strait traffic remains a fraction of pre-war levels, LNG tankers have turned back mid-crossing before, and QatarEnergy is still cancelling contracted deliveries months out.

DP World, meanwhile, is building for a disruption that may outlast the conflict. The UAE giant plans to grow its regional truck fleet by about 40%, to 1k vehicles from 700, and is adding land routes linking Europe, the US, and Asia to the Gulf.

And the Gemini twins keep drifting back toward Suez. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd will reroute four more joint container services — AE5, AE11, AE12, and ME2 — through the canal instead of around the Cape of Good Hope.

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Trucks are here to stay

DP World plans to expand its regional truck fleet by about 40% — wagering that Gulf shipping disruption through Hormuz will outlast the war, Bloomberg reports, citing Stephen Whittingham, the company’s COO for freight forwarding in Europe. The Dubai-based ports giant wants to take its fleet to 1k trucks from 700, and is adding land routes linking Europe, the US, and Asia to the Persian Gulf.

The rationale: reopening the strait won’t erase the risk. “I think we’ll never get back to the original normal,” Whittingham said, arguing that lingering uncertainty will keep demand for alternative routes alive.

The road network is already carrying business: DP World launched a trucking service from western Europe to the Gulf via Turkey within days of Hormuz closing. It now handles up to 50 trucks a week, mainly carrying automotive parts and everyday consumer goods, alongside separate sea-and-road services for cargo from Asia and the US, also routed through Turkey.

The larger fleet targets ports built to avoid Hormuz altogether, including Fujairah in the UAE, Salalah in Oman, and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Next on the route map would be trucking European cargo to Iraq, then shipping it across the Gulf to the UAE. Talks with Baghdad over a permanent service are ongoing, Whittingham said.

The catch: Going overland costs three to four times as much as shipping by sea. Whittingham nevertheless expects some customers to keep using the service after Hormuz reopens, pointing to the reliability of direct trucking amid shipping disruptions stretching from the Black Sea to the Middle East.

The signal: Trucking had its moment in the crisis — and looks set to keep a bigger role after it. Back in March, we were tracking whether the Gulf could truck its way out, by May, emergency landbridges were operating at scale. The port operator had rerouted more than 350k TEUs overland by July, and this fleet expansion is doubling down on the workaround.

Suez, cautiously

The Gemini twins keep drifting back toward Suez: Shipping giants Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd will reroute four more of their joint container services — AE5, AE11, AE12, and ME2 — through the Suez Canal instead of around the Cape of Good Hope, Reuters reports. Maersk said the switch will shorten transit times as the two carriers continue their gradual return to the Red Sea corridor.

A structural return or a test run? The four services add to a Suez comeback that has been building since July. Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd first brought their jointly operated AE15 back through the canal, before the Danish liner returned its MECL and WAF6 services. The two carriers then shifted their AE19 Gemini service back through Suez in August.

The Cape isn't being retired just yet, though: Maersk said any further changes to the Gemini network will remain dependent on stability in the Middle East and the absence of renewed escalation — the same contingency the carriers laid out when they first started moving services back through Suez earlier this summer.

Market watch

Oil prices rose this morning as attacks knocked Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline offline, stoking supply fears, Reuters reports. Brent crude futures gained USD 1.37 to USD 107.05 / bbl by 04.06 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) increased USD 1.53 to USD 102.92 / bbl.

The Baltic Index extends losses: The Baltic Exchange’s dry bulk index — which tracks rates for the capesize, panamax, and supramax vessel segments — fell 1.8% to 3,445 points on Monday. The capesize index dipped 2.8% to 5,912 points, while the panamax was down 0.4% to 1,725 points. The smaller supramax inched up 0.4% to 1,725 points.

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Qatari LNG is trickling back through Hormuz, but the real divide now is who can afford to keep bidding for gas

Qatar is moving LNG again — but force majeure isn’t going anywhere yet. A Qatari cargo reached Pakistan last week after becoming the first known LNG shipment from the country to cross Hormuz since July, while several empty Qatar-linked tankers have also moved back toward the Gulf. These likely remain exceptions rather than a restart: traffic through the strait is still a fraction of pre-war levels, LNG tankers have turned back from attempted crossings, and QatarEnergy is still cancelling contracted deliveries months ahead.

Why it matters: Six months in, the question has shifted from whether Qatari LNG can move to who can still afford it when it doesn't. Qatar entered the crisis shipping some 77-80 mn tons of LNG a year — roughly a fifth of global supply — into a market with little spare liquefaction capacity and no meaningful bypass for Qatari cargoes around Hormuz. Europe relied on Qatar for around 10% of its LNG, while major Asian buyers including China, India, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, and Bangladesh depended heavily on long-term Qatari contracts. When those flows stopped, both regions were pushed toward the same pool of flexible spot cargoes. Replacement LNG exists — but six months on, access increasingly comes down to who can keep bidding for it.

One cargo doesn’t undo six months of disruption

There are now two separate constraints keeping Qatari LNG bottled up. The first is Hormuz itself: Al Marrouna’s September crossing shows Doha can still negotiate or risk individual movements through the strait, and rare ship-to-ship transfers have allowed some cargoes to be handed off outside the Gulf — but neither workaround can carry anything close to Qatar's normal export program. The second constraint is physical, and harder to fix on any near-term timeline: Iranian strikes knocked two of Ras Laffan's 14 LNG trains offline, removing around 12.8 mtpa of capacity that could take three to five years to repair.

What's left of Ras Laffan is running hurt, not shut down. Undamaged trains have been kept operating at reduced rates, with loadings reaching a 10-day average of roughly 80k tons in August} — the strongest since March, but still around 60% below the previous year's pace. Qatar has also kept some production moving by supplying Kuwait and loading tankers already stranded inside the Gulf, buying operational continuity while the normal export map stays broken.

Not every buyer is losing this the same way

Losing Qatari gas hurts differently depending on how exposed and how flush a buyer is. Vulnerability comes down to three things: how much missing supply a buyer has to replace on the spot market, how easily it can switch away from gas, and whether it can afford replacement cargoes at much higher prices, Giovanni Bettinelli, gas market analyst, tells EnterpriseAM.

Pakistan and Bangladesh sit at the worst intersection of those three factors. Both combine heavy dependence on Qatari supply with limited ability to absorb higher spot prices. “But in India and Southeast Asia — they will see significant subsidy pressure but for these markets oil products are likely to be the greatest concern, not LNG,” Bettinelli adds.

Pakistan's rejected cargoes are the clearest evidence of that affordability ceiling. Before Al Marrouna arrived, Pakistan LNG had twice turned down a September spot cargo offered by BP Singapore — first at USD 26.9/mmBtu, then again at USD 26.7/mmBtu — because the price was too high.

Europe didn't dodge the shock — it outspent it

Europe's version of this crisis looks nothing like Pakistan's. Italy, Belgium, and Poland were Qatar's largest EU customers before the disruption, taking roughly 4.8 mt, 1.7 mt, and 1.6 mt respectively in 2025, Columbia University researcher Anne-Sophie Corbeau tells EnterpriseAM. Europe has largely kept the disruption from becoming a physical shortage by paying more for flexible LNG and drawing down an increasingly thin storage buffer.

That strategy has a running cost, and QatarEnergy is still adding to it: The company

has extended force majeure on Italy’s energy firm Edison LNG deliveries until early November, taking the total affected since April to 29 cargoes representing roughly 3.8 bcm. The company had replaced 21 of those cargoes by late August, equivalent to 2 bcm.

Other buyers are patching the gap their own way. Poland's Orlen has used its own LNG carrier fleet to lift replacement supply from US terminals, Brendan A'Hearn, gas market specialist at ICIS, tells EnterpriseAM. “But the biggest deficit is in Belgium, where QatarEnergy has had to sell many of its slots, some of which have not been bought and therefore remain empty,” he adds.

Replacing the cargoes still isn't the same as replacing the cushion. Consumption has stayed broadly stable year-on-year and most missing Qatari volumes were replaced, but Europe didn't buy enough extra LNG to keep storage injections on pace. Some of the supply gap has simply moved into lower inventories rather than showing up as shortages today, A'Hearn argues.

That's a wager Europe can only keep winning if the weather cooperates. Europe's edge into winter is its ability to keep outbidding more price-sensitive Asian buyers for flexible cargoes — but colder-than-expected weather or weaker renewable generation could accelerate storage withdrawals and set off another round of panic buying, Bettinelli notes.

The accidental beneficiary

If the Qatar shock has a clear near-term beneficiary, it's American gas. US supply has replaced the large majority of lost Qatari volumes into Europe, while Canada and smaller African producers have added incremental barrels. US LNG exports were already up 23% y-o-y in 1H 2026 as new liquefaction capacity came online.

Now the irony: Qatar may end up buying from the country that benefited most from its absence. QatarEnergy is seeking around 2-3 mtpa of US LNG under multi-year agreements through 2031 and has held talks with Venture Global, Cheniere, and Woodside after already buying dozens of US spot cargoes to cover customer commitments.

That gives Doha an exit that doesn't depend on Hormuz reopening. US cargoes can be lifted and delivered directly to QatarEnergy's customers from American terminals, letting the company keep meeting contracts without routing volumes through the Gulf at all — a longer runway that doesn't require the strait to normalize or Ras Laffan's damaged trains to come back online.

Gulftainer makes Thailand debut with Suksawat Terminal investment

Gulftainer establishes its first Thai foot at Suksawat: The Sharjah-based port operator has signed a binding agreement for a strategic investment in Suksawat Terminal, south of Bangkok — marking its first entry into the Thai market, the company said in a press release. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

The terminal gives Gulftainer a route into Bangkok's industrial economy. The company plans to invest in Suksawat's capacity, productivity, and services, while using it to develop inland logistics, industrial infrastructure, and maritime connectivity. Its location south of Bangkok puts it close to major manufacturing and consumption centres, including automotive, electronics, petrochemicals, consumer goods, and food industries.

IN CONTEXT- Gulftainer launched a USD 2 bn global trade infrastructure strategy in July aimed at bringing ports, shipping, and supply-chain infrastructure under a more integrated platform. At home, it’s simultaneously expanding its flagship Khorfakkan terminal beyond 10 mn TEUs of capacity and targeting another 2-3 mn TEUs of inland logistics capacity.

UAE port operators 💙 Thai ports: DP World secured a five-year extension earlier this year to operate the B5 berth at Laem Chabang International Terminal through April 2031. The terminal handled a record 1.9 mn TEUs in 2025, while Laem Chabang itself is undergoing an expansion designed to lift annual container capacity to 18 mn TEUs from 11 mn.

Gulftainer is making similar moves elsewhere: The firm was finalizing a concession to develop Uganda’s first rail-connected dry port, while it has separately been weighing as much as USD 1 bn of investment in Egyptian container terminal and port logistics.

flydubai launches its dedicated cargo operations

Flydubai is moving into dedicated cargo: UAE’s budget carrier Flydubai is set to launch dedicated freighter operations on 1 October with three Boeing 737-800 freighters wet-leased from SolitAir, according to a press release. The carrier plans to use its dedicated freighters to grow volumes across pharma, perishables, aerospace components, express shipments, live animals, and dangerous goods, complementing the cargo capacity already carried across its passenger network.

Why this matters: The move marks Flydubai’s first dedicated freighter fleet, with cargo previously carried exclusively in the belly holds of its 98 passenger aircraft. Each freighter can carry up to 23k kg per flight and will be based at Al Maktoum International Airport.

Washington's new Iran sanctions push tests how much exposure China is actually willing to defend

Washington wants to sever every economic line connecting Iran to the outside world — China is the one line it can't easily cut. The US Treasury launched a sweeping new sanctions push, Operation Economic Outcast, aiming to choke off Iran's economic lifelines globally, widen exposure to secondary sanctions, and set deadlines for countries to wind down Iran-related business, according to a Treasury statement announcing the program. How far Washington can push that isolation without colliding with Chinese commercial and infrastructure interests is the harder question.

China sits on the other end of Iran's biggest remaining equity pipeline — and that's the leverage Washington can't fully touch. China has absorbed roughly 90% of Iran's oil exports, with Iranian crude accounting for around 1.4 mn bbl / d of Chinese imports in 2025, Reuters reported. The blockade is already squeezing that trade hard: Iranian crude loadings collapsed to around 220k-255k bbl / d in August, down from around 2 mn bbl / d in March.

Why it matters: China buys the overwhelming share of Iran's oil and has bankrolled much of its energy and transport infrastructure — which makes Beijing's appetite to keep trading and financing at the margin the single biggest variable in how far Washington's isolation campaign can go. But the numbers below suggest that lever is weaker than the headline exposure implies.

China has built more in Iran than it owns

China's footprint in Iran is financial: Chinese state-backed lenders and contractors have spent more than two decades financing and building Iranian railways, power plants, industrial facilities, and energy assets. AidData counts more than USD 25 bn of Chinese loan commitments to Iranian infrastructure between 2000 and 2023, while Chinese government data put direct investment in Iran at just USD 3.9 bn at end-2023 — a lender and contractor's footprint, not an owner's.

Look at financing and construction instead of equity, and the picture changes fast. China Eximbank signed a roughly USD 1.5 bn loan for the 926 km Tehran-Mashhad railway electrification project in 2017, financing most of an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract with China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation. Iran provided a sovereign-guarantee and Sinosure backed the financing. The payoff has been thin: AidData says the project had reached just 3% completion by mid-2019, and later reports indicated the Chinese contractor had walked away.

Power infrastructure tells the same story. China Eximbank extended an RMB 3.6 bn (c. USD 563.4 mn) loan for the 913 MW Lamard combined-cycle plant, with Iran's government guaranteeing the debt and state-owned China National Electric Engineering Co. acting as one of the contractors. The same bank separately put up USD 613 mn for the Abadan combined-cycle power project and financed a 448 MW plant in Zanjan.

China pushed furthest into the oil and gas chain — and even there, it's shown it can pull back. Sinopec signed a roughly USD 2 bn agreement to develop the Yadavaran oil field and later a USD 2.1 bn contract to upgrade the Abadan refinery. CNPC entered the first phase of North Azadegan under an agreement valued at around USD 2 bn, and held a 30% stake in the South Pars gas project worth roughly USD 600 mn. CNPC walked away from South Pars in 2019 under US pressure.

Beijing has also kept today's sanctioned oil trade at arm's length from its national champions. Iranian barrels increasingly flow through independent Chinese refiners, while major state refiners keep their distance from sanctioned crude. Washington has aimed part of its pressure at those independents, including sanctioning Hengli Petrochemical's Dalian refinery earlier this year, alleging its Iranian crude purchases generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Iran's military.

That limited exposure appears deliberate: “The economic relationship between China and Iran is deeply one-sided in that Iran stands to gain more from China than China from Iran,” Amandeep Kaur Ahuja, Geopolitical Risk Consultant & Researcher, tells EnterpriseAM. While Iran directs most of its exports to China, those barrels sit within a much broader mix of energy suppliers for Beijing. China's relatively limited investment in Iran despite years of deeper economic cooperation also signals a reluctance to become too exposed to a market carrying significant geopolitical and physical risks, she adds.

The exposure only cuts one way

The first test is already playing out at the refinery gate. The blockade has choked the supply of Iranian crude reaching Chinese independent refiners, pushing buyers toward alternatives including Russian, Brazilian, Canadian, and Iraqi barrels. Some smaller refiners could be forced to cut runs if Iranian supply stays scarce and replacement barrels stay pricey. Iran relies heavily on Chinese demand — but Chinese refiners have other places to look.

The loss would dent margins more than it would threaten supply.“Iran accounts for 2% of Chinese oil, so if China were to lose Iran as an energy source, it would only impact pricing (because Iranian crude is heavily discounted) and not the overall supply,” Ahuja notes.

Beijing has built in buffers around that exposure, too. “Chinese oil purchases from Iran are primarily conducted through small, privately owned 'teapot' refiners. Financing is processed through non-USD measures. This suggests limited exposure to any interdependencies with Iran while still being able to access discounted crude from Iran, and deliberately framed so,” Ahuja argues.

Infrastructure gets more exposed where the oil trade sits underneath the financing itself. A EUR 2.5 bn agreement signed in 2023 for Phase 2 of Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport was structured by Chinese state-owned Hakan Energy as an oil-backed EPC financing agreement, according to AidData. The loan is collateralized against future Iranian oil-export receipts, with a new terminal planned as the centerpiece of the expansion. AidData says the first EUR 500 mn disbursement landed in late 2023, though reports in 2024-2025 raised questions over Hakan Energy's financial condition and continued involvement.

That makes the airport project a useful model for what the blockade could do beyond energy exports. If Iranian oil receipts are collateral for infrastructure finance, choking the barrels doesn't just remove export income — it can undercut the mechanism that's supposed to fund repayment and delivery. But that doesn't mean China eats the first loss. In several of these projects, China's role is lender, insurer, EPC contractor, or equipment supplier rather than long-term owner. Sovereign guarantees, buyer's credits, and oil-backed collateral can push most of the project risk back onto Iran, even when Chinese institutions supply the capital and construction capacity.

Calendar

16-17 September (Wednesday-Thursday): Saudi Maritime & Logistics Congress, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

22-23 September (Tuesday-Wednesday): Breakbulk Americas, Houston, US.

22-24 September (Tuesday-Thursday): Seamless Middle East, Dubai, UAE.

28-30 September (Monday-Wednesday): Transport Logistics Middle East, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

OCTOBER

12-14 October (Monday-Wednesday): The Airport Show, Dubai, UAE.

20-22 October (Tuesday-Thursday): TOC Americas, Cartagena, Colombia.

21-22 October (Wednesday-Thursday): Global Ports Forum, Singapore.

26-29 (Monday-Thursday): Air Cargo Forum, Miami, US.

27-29 October (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes World, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

NOVEMBER

2-5 November (Monday-Thursday): ADIPEC Maritime and Logistics Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

10-11 November (Tuesday-Wednesday): TOC Asia, Singapore.

10-12 November (Tuesday-Thursday): Intermodal Europe, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

11-13 November (Wednesday-Friday): Logitrans, Istanbul, Turkey.

18-19 November (Wednesday-Thursday): Breakbulk Asia, Singapore.

FEBRUARY 2027

10-12 February (Wednesday-Friday): Routes Americas, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

MARCH 2027

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): CMA Shipping, Houston, US.

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Asia, New Delhi, India.

APRIL 2027

20-22 April (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Europe, Antalya, Turkey.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Transport Logistic and air cargo Europe, Munich, Germany.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Saudi Smart Logistics, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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