Iran targeted and hit Qatar’s Ras Laffan gas plant on March 18, the backbone of Qatar's LNG exports and source of a third of the world’s supply of liquid gas.

The hit destroyed 17% of Qatar’s production capacity at a single blow that could take years to fix and probably catapulted the US into the dominant position in the global LNG market in the process.

The facility can be fixed, but the open question is how long will it take? The Pearl gas-to-liquids plant, located in the Ras Laffan City site, was the victim of the strike and houses some of the most complicated machines on the plant. Repairs could take years.

Shell, which operates Pearl, released a statement saying it estimates the facility will take one year to repair. That is good news. That suggests while the damage was significant, some of the most sensitive and complicated components of the plant were spared: 2 of the 14 LNG trains were “damaged”, according to the authorities, but the full extent of the damage is still not clear.

The main problem is that only five firms in the whole world make the most complicated components, and their order books are already backed up. If Pearl’s most sensitive components have been damaged, then it could take four to five years before Pearl is running at full steam again.

Sanctions on Russia's Novatek Arctic LNG-2 project highlight the problem: the US sanctions cut Novatek off from these components and stymied the rollout of new LNG lines for exactly this reason. Russia was unable to make the key parts itself, and China had a go but produced substandard pieces. This was one place that western technology sanctions actually worked and cut Russia from essential technology, without which it can’t grow its liquid natural gas business.

How it works

Every LNG train at Ras Laffan City depends on a continuous supply of high-purity nitrogen produced by Air Separation Units (ASUs), large-scale industrial plants that cool atmospheric air to around minus 190°C to separate it into its component gases — primarily nitrogen, oxygen and argon. In LNG operations, nitrogen is used to maintain inert conditions, preventing combustion and ensuring safe processing of gas.

At Shell’s Pearl gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility operations require approximately 30,000 tonnes per day of pure oxygen, also supplied by ASUs built by Germany’s Linde. Oxygen is critical in GTL processes to enable the controlled conversion of natural gas into liquid fuels.

Shells’ Pearl GTL's eight ASUs are extremely complex machines. Each ASU is centred on a “cold box” — a large, insulated structure housing the cryogenic distillation equipment. These units can weigh around 470 tonnes and stand up to 60 metres tall.

From contract award to commissioning, ASUs typically take three to four years to deliver, given the engineering precision, manufacturing constraints and installation requirements. In the event of destruction, replacement capacity would not come online before 2029, creating a prolonged bottleneck for LNG and GTL output.

The choke point

The choke point is at the core of every ASU – a brazed aluminium heat exchanger known as a BAHX (brazed aluminium plate-fin heat exchanger), a critical component that enables the extreme cooling required for gas separation.

“The critical components, aluminium plate-fin heat exchangers and rectification columns, were fabricated at Linde's workshops in Schalchen, Germany and Dalian, China. Then shipped as pre-assembled modules to Ras Laffan,” says Veron Wickramasinghe, an engineer and analyst in a social media post. “The original EPC contract for all eight units was valued at approximately $800mn to $1bn in 2006 prices. The total Pearl GTL project cost $18-$19bn. The ASU complex alone represented roughly 5 percent of the entire facility cost.”

These exchangers operate with temperature differentials of as little as one to two Kelvin, requiring highly controlled manufacturing processes, including precision brazing in vacuum furnaces to ensure structural integrity at cryogenic temperatures.

“Every liquefaction train at Ras Laffan requires massive quantities of high-purity nitrogen. Nitrogen is injected into the LNG process as a refrigerant component and to control the heating value of the final product. Without nitrogen, the train cannot produce specification-grade LNG. The ASU is the lung of every LNG facility. Cut the oxygen supply to a human body and the organs shut down. Cut the nitrogen supply to an LNG train and the entire downstream chain goes dead,” says Wickramasinghe.

Only five firms make the heat exchangers

Production is concentrated among a small group of specialised manufacturers: Fives Cryo in France, Kobelco and Sumitomo in Japan, Linde in Germany, and Chart Industries in the United States. Lead times currently range from 12 to 18 months or longer, with order books already filled, limiting the ability to rapidly replace damaged units. The lead time for manufacturing a single mega-scale ASU, from contract signing to operational commissioning, is three to four years.

QatarEnergy Chief Executive Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi confirmed that LNG Trains 4 and 6 at Ras Laffan have been damaged, taking 12.8mn tonnes per annum (mtpa) of capacity offline. All the repairs are expected to take three to five years, with an estimated $20bn in annual revenue losses and a force majeure that was imposed in the first days of Operation Epic Fury potentially lasting up to five years. Shell has said that Pearl GTL’s Unit 2 will require around one year of repairs.

What remains unclear is whether the ASUs themselves were destroyed. Shell’s one-year repair estimate suggests that core ASU infrastructure may be intact, as full replacement would typically require four to five years given engineering, procurement and construction timelines.

In addition to the lost LNG production, Qatar produces roughly one-third of the world’s helium from facilities integrated into the same industrial complex. Helium, a by-product of natural gas processing, is essential for semiconductor manufacturing, among other things, and has no viable substitute in key applications such as advanced chip fabrication.

The LNG trains, ASUs and helium production facilities are co-located, drawing on the same Qatari North Field gas reserves that it shares with Iran, and reliant on shared infrastructure and maritime access through the Strait of Hormuz. Strikes reported between March 18 and 19 disrupted an estimated 17% of global LNG supply while simultaneously threatening around one-third of global helium output.

There have been claims that the ASUs were hit but they originate from satellite-based thermal analysis published by an energy industry blog. However, no official damage assessment has been released. Shell’s stated repair timeline of one-year for restoring Pearl GTL Unit 2 is consistent with the assumption the ASUs have not been destroyed.