On February 28, 2026, Qatar stopped shipping gas for something far more problematic than a production failure or a labor dispute; the water route used to move the LNG had been closed. The Strait of Hormuz, a 21-mile passage between Iran and Oman, shut to commercial traffic, and with it went 20% of the world’s LNG supply in a single day. From that point on, Onyx gas experts began analyzing the situation and its current impact on the markets.
Markets moved before Onyx gas analysts finished writing their notes. Europe’s TTF benchmark hit $14.80/MMBtu, up 35% from before the closure. Asia’s JKM index reached $16.02/MMBtu, a 51% jump. No laden LNG vessel crossed the strait between March 1 and April 24. Buyers on two continents were competing for spot cargoes that, in many cases, no longer existed.
Qatar Has No Alternate Route
Unlike the flexible pipeline networks in Texas that allow for easy rerouting, Qatar’s Ras Laffan, one of the world’s largest LNG hubs, is geographically vulnerable. Its exports rely entirely on shipping routes that must pass through the narrow Strait of Hormuz.
QatarEnergy declared force majeure on March 4, which legally released it from delivery obligations and shifted the problem entirely onto buyers. Over 80% of Qatar’s LNG sales go to Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China, all of which found themselves short on contracted volumes at the same time, bidding against European utilities that had already been running thin on storage after a colder-than-average winter.
European gas storage finished the season at 28% full. The five-year average for that date is 41%. That gap has to be filled before next winter, almost entirely through spot purchases, at whatever price the market clears.
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U.S. Henry Hub Dropped 9% During the Same Period
More domestic production, export terminals already running at 94% utilization, and the end of winter demand have pushed Henry Hub prices to their lowest since October 2024. The U.S. physically cannot export enough gas fast enough to drain its own market, so as our Onyx gas specialists were expecting, the surplus is staying home and softening prices.
That calculation changes as new terminals come online. The DOE approved capacity expansions at Plaquemines LNG (0.5 Bcf/d) in March and Elba Island (0.1 Bcf/d) in April. Golden Pass Trains 1 and 2, plus Corpus Christi Stage 3 Trains 5 through 7, are expected to add approximately 2.4 Bcf/d of export capacity between now and December 2026. Each increment of new capacity is another channel through which domestic gas can exit the U.S. market toward international buyers willing to pay $14 to $16/MMBtu.
The spread between Henry Hub and international benchmarks is wide right now. Wide spreads are what attract infrastructure investment. That infrastructure is already built.
What the Export Numbers Actually Show, According to Onyx Gas Consultants
U.S. LNG exports hit an estimated 17.9 Bcf/d in March 2026, the second-highest monthly volume on record. The forecast for full-year 2026 is 18.7 Bcf/d, rising to 20.5 Bcf/d in 2027. Europe was already receiving a record 10.3 Bcf/d of U.S. LNG before the closure. With Qatari supply offline and Asian buyers paying a premium for anything available, U.S. terminals have one commercial incentive: send more gas out.
The domestic market absorbs this through price. Not all at once, and not dramatically, but gradually, as export capacity grows and the pool of gas available for domestic commercial buyers shrinks relative to demand.
If Hormuz Reopens, the Contracts Signed During the Closure Won’t
European utilities that scrambled through March and April are not going back to single-source, short-term arrangements. They are signing multi-year LNG supply agreements with U.S. exporters right now, priced to reflect the risk they just lived through. That demand is structural once it’s contracted. A Hormuz reopening changes the headline price on TTF and JKM. It does not unwind the supply agreements that redraw where U.S. gas goes for the next decade.
The five terminals commissioning through 2027 were not designed around this specific disruption. They were designed around a long-term bet that global LNG demand would grow and that U.S. producers would be the ones to supply it. The Hormuz closure accelerated the timeline on that bet; the terminals get built either way.
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Where Texas Businesses Get Caught
Most commercial energy buyers are not watching TTF or tracking LNG export authorization notices. That’s reasonable, it’s not their job, and it’s kind of annoying. The problem is that the random signal between a global supply shock and a commercial energy bill in Dallas or Houston, it could be a quiet repricing at contract renewal, or a variable rate that moves before anyone reviews it.
At Onyx Gas & Power Consulting, the job is to sit between those signals and your energy costs. When the Hormuz closure happened, the Onyx Gas team was already mapping which client contracts were approaching renewal, which were on variable rates, and where locking in a fixed term made sense given the export buildout timeline ahead. That’s the kind of work we do.
If your contract renews in the next 12 months, the window to act on the current Henry Hub pricing is narrower than it looks. Contact Onyx Gas & Power Consulting for a no-cost review of your energy contract.
