Qatar's Emir Says Government Revenue Fell 42% in First Half as Iran War Cut Gas Exports

Qatar's government took in 42% less money in the first half of 2026 than it did a year earlier, and the man who runs the country says the Iran war is the reason.

Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani gave the figure on Tuesday, Oct. 13, at the annual session of the Shura Council in Doha. Public expenditure fell 14% over the same period.

"The crisis naturally had an adverse impact on public finances, with total revenues falling by 42 per cent during the first half of the year, while public expenditures decreased by 14 per cent, all without compromising essential services or development priorities," he said.

What broke

Two things hit Qatar's gas business at once. The Strait of Hormuz, the only sea route for Qatar's LNG shipments, was closed. And Iranian missile strikes in March damaged facilities at Ras Laffan Industrial City, the country's main LNG complex.

"The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, along with direct damage to some energy facilities in Ras Laffan Industrial City, has disrupted a significant portion of the country's exports," the emir said.

Qatar is the world's second-largest LNG exporter behind the United States and supplied about a fifth of global LNG trade before the war. QatarEnergy has also halted most production at Ras Laffan and at Mesaieed, and is citing force majeure to cancel major LNG shipments to Asia and Europe.

About 17% of Qatar's LNG export capacity is offline after Iranian strikes damaged two of its 14 export trains, removing 12.8 million tonnes a year from the market. QatarEnergy has said repairs will take three to five years.

The restart question

That repair timeline sits awkwardly beside another QatarEnergy claim: that it could restart full LNG production within weeks of Hormuz being officially reopened. Industry experts quoted by Reuters on Monday were skeptical.

Their argument is that LNG is far harder to restart than oil exports. The production chain is intricate and fragile, and Qatar lacks the storage to absorb a large backlog if anything stalls along the way. Two damaged trains also cap what "full production" can mean for years.

The emir did not address the restart timeline in the remarks reported so far.

The numbers around it

The International Monetary Fund forecast on Tuesday, in its latest global report, that Qatar's GDP will shrink 15.6% this year. Qatar is among the hardest-hit Gulf economies. Gulf economies overall are projected to contract by an average of 4.3% in 2026.

The emir's pitch is that Qatar was built for a shock like this. He credited reserves, reduced public debt, conservative oil-price assumptions in the budget and growth in non-oil revenue. He said the damage is concentrated in energy, while non-hydrocarbon industries, about 80% of real GDP, continue to grow.

"This reflects the national economy's ability to withstand and continue growing under exceptional and complex circumstances," he said.

The claim that essential services and development priorities were untouched is the government's own account. No breakdown of the 42% drop by source has been published in the emir's remarks.

Revenue fell three times as fast as spending. The emir did not give a deficit figure or say how the gap is being financed.

Expansion plans unchanged

Despite the damage, Doha is not rewriting its long-range plans. The emir said work on the North Field expansion "is progressing according to the set plans." The project aims to lift Qatar's capacity to 142 million tonnes of LNG a year by 2030.

North Field is the world's largest natural gas field and extends under the Gulf into Iranian territory. He also said the Golden Pass LNG project in the United States, which Qatar is developing with ExxonMobil, has "made significant progress."

The government also plans $60.7 billion in investments over five years, covering infrastructure, public-private partnerships, real estate and hospitality.

Security stance

The emir called the security and sovereignty of Gulf states a red line and described the Iranian attack on Qatari territory as a blatant violation of sovereignty. Qatar denounced the Ras Laffan strike at the time as a "dangerous escalation" and a direct threat to national security. Like other Gulf states attacked by Iran, it took no overt retaliatory action.

The diplomatic picture remains unsettled. Pakistan has urged the U.S. and Iran to honor a peace agreement amid rising Gulf tensions, and Washington has rejected Iran's claims of control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The open question for Doha is when ships can move again and how much of the 17% of lost capacity can be replaced before 2030. QatarEnergy's weeks-to-restart claim and its own three-to-five-year repair estimate cannot both describe the same output.