Third Qatari LNG Tanker Through Hormuz to China; Al Sahla En Route
A third Qatari liquefied natural gas tanker is transiting the Strait of Hormuz today and heading to China, as a Qatari negotiating team arrived in Tehran to try to help secure a deal to end the war with Iran. The vessel, Al Sahla, with a capacity of 211,842 cubic metres, left Ras Laffan and is expected to arrive at China’s Tianjin LNG terminal on 14 June. The previous two Qatari LNG tankers to make it through the strait since the US-Israeli airstrikes unleashed the Iran war at the end of February were sold by Qatar to Pakistan under a government-to-government deal, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Shipments through the waterway continue to be erratic; this third transit comes nearly two weeks after the first cargo passed through under an Iran-Pakistan arrangement. The third tanker’s flow to China — rather than to a Pakistan transit re-sale — is the operational signal that the Iranian protection-racket framework that ISW described yesterday is now being formalised at the bilateral-agreement level for top-tier strategic partners. QatarEnergy’s CEO has previously said that repairs to the export facilities damaged by the conflict could take between three and five years; Qatar’s normal LNG export capacity is 12.8 million metric tons per year. The Hormuz transit lane through which a fifth of global oil and LNG transited before the war is now functionally controlled by IRGC-set bilateral agreements.