What strikes on the world’s largest natural gas sites could do to the global economy | CNN Business

The Iran war has driven oil prices to their highest levels in years. Now, a wave of attacks in the past 24 hours on energy production sites across the Middle East has turned the spotlight on another crucial fossil fuel: liquefied natural gas, or LNG. On Wednesday, QatarEnergy said its Ras Laffan LNG hub, the world’s largest such facility, had sustained “extensive damage” after being struck by Iranian missiles twice in 12 hours. QatarEnergy’s exports, accounting for almost a fifth of global LNG supply, were already trapped by the Strait of Hormuz blockade and production had been halted on March 2 after an earlier attack. But the latest strikes on Ras Laffan “fundamentally” alter the global natural gas market outlook, according to Wood Mackenzie, a data and analytics company. In a note Thursday, it said disruption to global natural gas supply was now likely to last longer than two months. The attacks on Ras Laffan were a retaliation for Israeli attacks this week on South Pars, part of the world’s largest natural gas field. South Pars is not only critical to Iran’s domestic electricity supply, it also supplies Turkey via pipeline. Even before the latest strikes, countr