Gulf oil giants are racing into the biggest global scramble for gas assets in over a decade

Gulf oil giants are racing into the biggest global scramble for gas assets in over a decade. The premiums that buyers are paying are the highest since 2013 — a wager that gas demand will keep climbing even if prices don’t come down, the Financial Times reports.

Global spending on gas production assets hit USD 32 bn in 1H 2026, the highest level in more than a decade, and Gulf national oil companies are among the buyers driving it, industry consultancy Wood Mackenzie found.

Why it matters: The Gulf’s biggest oil producers were already hunting for gas outside the region before the US-Iran war started, looking to diversify beyond home-market production. The conflict has sharpened the case. XRG, Adnoc’s international investment arm, already holds gas assets in Texas, Mozambique, and Turkmenistan, and has signed agreements to add Azerbaijan, Argentina, and Venezuela — with tens of bns of USD earmarked for its US gas business alone. Saudi Aramco has taken a stake in Texas’ Port Arthur LNG project and bought into MidOcean Energy, the LNG platform EIG built. Both are chasing the same asset class the whole market wants: gas outside the Strait of Hormuz.

The trigger is Qatar’s six-month squeeze. The world’s third-largest LNG exporter has spent half a year under threat in the strait, with Iranian missile strikes cutting into its export capacity. That has pushed buyers — and prices — toward North America. LNG cargoes from the US Gulf Coast hit USD 21.98/mmBtu on Thursday, per Spark Commodities, the highest since December 2022 and up 4.4% on the week. The European benchmark broke EUR 70/MWh on Friday for only the second time since the war began.

The money is following the price signal into the ground, not just onto tankers. Some USD 30 bn went into developing unconventional gas in North America in 1H alone — triple the three-year average, Wood Mackenzie said. The single biggest agreement was Shell’s USD 16.4 bn purchase of Canadian shale producer Arc Resources, its largest acquisition since it bought BG a decade ago. Japanese investors, chasing energy security rather than returns, now hold 36% of production at the Haynesville shale basin in Texas and Louisiana. Trading house Gunvor is in talks to buy more than USD 1 bn of Haynesville gas assets.

Our take: XRG and Aramco aren’t hedging Hormuz risk by buying ins. — they’re buying the thing that replaces the risk. Every barrel of North American or Latin American gas either company owns is a barrel of supply that doesn’t have to transit the strait. That’s a strategic logic distinct from the financial one driving Shell or Gunvor, and it’s why the Gulf producers can absorb 2013-level premiums that would give a pure financial buyer pause.

What’s next? The International Energy Agency expects gas demand growth to outpace oil under current policy settings, though under tougher climate policy it would plateau by 2035. That plateau might arrive sooner if prices stay this high: Energy Aspects’ Livia Gallarati said some Asian governments are already growing “more conservative” on gas expansion plans, weighing renewables and slower coal phase-outs instead.