American liquefied natural gas is having its biggest moment yet. With Qatar's Ras Laffan complex offline and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz at a standstill, buyers from Tokyo to Rotterdam are scrambling for US cargoes and paying steep premiums to get them.
The Dutch TTF benchmark climbed to €55.48 per megawatt hour on Monday, after briefly spiking above €60 on March 3 for the first time since February 2025. Asia's JKM spot marker rose above $15.70 per million British thermal units, a one-year high. Goldman Sachs warned that a sustained monthlong halt to Hormuz flows could push TTF toward €74 ($85.80 per MWh), levels not seen since the 2022 European energy crisis.
A fifth of global LNG wiped out overnight
QatarEnergy declared force majeure on its contracts after Iranian drone strikes hit the Ras Laffan industrial complex on March 3. That single facility accounted for roughly 20% of global LNG trade. Combined with UAE volumes also stuck behind the Hormuz chokepoint, the market lost more supply in 48 hours than any disruption since the 2011 Fukushima disaster reshaped Japanese energy imports.
About 83% of LNG cargo transiting the strait is destined for Asia, according to Kpler data. Japan, South Korea, India, and China are all exposed, though not equally. Beijing has been building up reserves and diversifying toward Russian pipeline gas for over a year.
Gulf of Mexico steps in
US export terminals sit thousands of miles from the conflict zone, and that geographic advantage now matters more than ever. Eight operational facilities along the Gulf Coast shipped a combined 15 billion cubic feet per day last year, making the United States the world's largest LNG exporter ahead of Australia and Qatar.
Capacity is still growing. Golden Pass LNG in Sabine Pass, Texas, completed commissioning of its first liquefaction train and is preparing to ship its first commercial cargo, with ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods saying in late January that first LNG production was expected in March. The facility will eventually add 2.57 Bcf/d across three trains. The Plaquemines LNG facility in Louisiana started shipping in late 2024, and Corpus Christi's Stage 3 expansion sent its first cargo in March 2025. The EIA projects total US LNG export capacity will reach roughly 19 Bcf/d by the end of this year, up from about 17 Bcf/d at the close of 2025.
The bottleneck problem
More capacity on paper does not mean instant relief. Terminals take months to ramp up, and the global fleet of LNG carriers is already stretched thin. Freight rates for spot charters have jumped as Asian and European buyers compete for the same Atlantic Basin cargoes.
Europe is particularly vulnerable. Storage sites held just 46 billion cubic metres by late February, the lowest since the 2022 energy crisis. Before the Hormuz blockade, 68% of US LNG exports already headed to European ports. Diverting more cargoes eastward to replace lost Qatari volumes would tighten European supply further, a zero-sum game with no quick fix.
Pricing power shifts west
For US producers and terminal operators, the crisis has handed them extraordinary leverage. Cheniere Energy operates the two largest US export facilities: Sabine Pass, which alone handled 39% of all US export cargoes through November 2025 according to the EIA, and Corpus Christi. Together, the two sites give Cheniere roughly half of total US LNG export capacity. Long-term contract holders are sitting on massive arbitrage gains as spot prices surge.
Henry Hub natural gas, the US benchmark, traded at $3.14 per million British thermal units on Monday, still cheap by global standards but up sharply from the $2.67 low of the past 52 weeks. The EIA forecasts US marketed production will average 120.8 Bcf/d this year and climb to a record 122.3 Bcf/d in 2027, mostly from the Appalachian, Haynesville, and Permian basins.
What comes next
The longer the Hormuz standoff drags on, the more entrenched America's role as the world's swing LNG supplier becomes. New terminals already under construction will not hit peak output for years. That leaves a gap between what buyers need right now and what US infrastructure can deliver, and that gap will keep spot prices elevated and sharpen the competition between European and Asian importers for every available cargo.