An explosion at Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City on Sunday injured 54 people and left 18 others missing, the country’s interior ministry said Monday.
The ministry attributed the incident to a “technical malfunction”, describing it as an “internal explosion.” QatarEnergy confirmed the blast occurred “during the start-up of operations at Ras Laffan Industrial City, which resulted in an explosion and fire at Barzan local gas supply facility.” The scale of the damage remains unknown, with authorities still searching for the missing.
The blast comes at a particularly fraught moment for Qatar’s energy sector. The country halted LNG production on March 2 after Iranian drone strikes hit key facilities at Ras Laffan. A second wave of attacks on March 18 was assessed to have cut LNG export capacity by 17 percent, damage that Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad Al-Kaabi said at the time could take three to five years to repair.
With Iran easing pressure on the Strait of Hormuz as negotiations over a permanent end to the US-Iran conflict continue, Qatar had begun work to restart its export terminal. Sunday’s explosion occurred during that restart process.
An AFP journalist located 20 kilometres from the site reported seeing flames lighting the night sky and a column of smoke rising from the industrial zone, which hosts the world’s largest LNG hub.
Qatar is among the world’s top LNG producers alongside the US, Australia and Russia. Any further disruption to Ras Laffan operations carries implications for global gas markets still absorbing the earlier damage from the Iranian strikes.
