Explosion at Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG terminal injures 54, leaves 18 missing during restart

The explosion

An explosion tore through the Ras Laffan Industrial City in northern Qatar late on Sunday, 21 June, sending flames and a column of smoke into the night sky. The blast, described by authorities as an "internal explosion" following a technical incident, injured 54 people and left 18 missing, according to Qatar's Ministry of Interior. Civil defence teams were deployed immediately, and the resulting fire was brought under control. An AFP journalist roughly 20 kilometres south of Ras Laffan reported seeing flames lighting up the sky and smoke rising above the coastal complex.

“An internal explosion occurred as a result of a technical incident at a plant in the Ras Laffan industrial zone. Civil defence teams intervened to manage the incident. In total, 54 people were injured in the incident, and searches are underway for 18 missing persons.”

A restart gone wrong

The explosion struck as state-owned QatarEnergy was restarting operations at the Barzan gas supply facility, part of the vast Ras Laffan complex. Production had been suspended since 2 March, when Iranian missile strikes damaged the LNG hub in retaliation for Israeli-American attacks on Iranian infrastructure. A second wave of attacks on 18 March further reduced Qatar's export capacity by 17%. Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi said at the time that repairs would take between three and five years.

“During the commissioning of operations in Ras Laffan Industrial City, an operational incident occurred causing an explosion and fire at the local Barzan gas supply facility on the evening of Sunday, 21 June 2026.”

Geopolitical backdrop

Qatar had been forced to halt LNG exports after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in late February, blocking tanker traffic from the Gulf. A US-brokered peace deal recently led Tehran to ease its grip, and Doha began preparing to resume shipments. However, on Saturday, 20 June, Iran declared it had re-closed the strait, even as restart work at Ras Laffan continued. The explosion now compounds the uncertainty surrounding Qatari gas flows.

Facility and market impact

The Barzan plant has a capacity of nearly 1.4 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day, primarily supplying power stations and desalination plants essential for the arid Gulf state. Qatar is the world's second-largest LNG exporter after the United States, and Ras Laffan is its main production hub. The facility is almost entirely owned by QatarEnergy, with a minority stake held by ExxonMobil, which has not commented on the incident. Any prolonged disruption risks tightening global gas markets already strained by the months-long outage. The full extent of the damage remains unknown, and officials initially reported only a small number of injuries before the toll was revised sharply upward hours later.