The spread's shape: two spikes, not one
Henry Hub stayed essentially flat throughout — insulated by domestic production and a mild summer, it never left the low-$3/MMBtu range. The importing benchmarks did something more informative: they spiked, fell most of the way back, then spiked again.
| Date | JKM (Asia) | TTF (Europe) | Henry Hub | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2026 (avg) | $21.65, briefly above $20 at the peak (Shell) | $16.2 | ~flat | Shock onset — Ras Laffan strike, Qatar force majeure (4 Mar) |
| Apr 2026 (avg) | $17.92 | $15.34 | flat | Elevated but off the peak |
| 17-20 Jun | Ceasefire signed 17-19 Jun reversed within a day — Iran re-closed the strait 20 Jun | — | flat | Not a sustained de-escalation |
| 27 Jun | — | — | flat | US Navy (JMIC) opens a widened route near Oman — partial, contested easing |
| 17 Jul | high-$20s (2nd spike, Global LNG Hub) | $19.2 | $2.90 | Re-escalation around Hormuz |
| 2 Aug | $21.38 | ~$19.6 | $2.95 | Cooling from the 2nd peak, still elevated |
Trajectory sources: Global LNG Hub (2026), Kpler (2026), CNBC (2026), LNGPriceIndex.com (2026), and U.S. Energy Information Administration (2026).
That gives a TTF–Henry Hub spread of ~$16.6/MMBtu and a JKM–Henry Hub spread of ~$18.4/MMBtu as of early August — both several times the ~$3-4/MMBtu that liquefaction and shipping alone cost, the threshold that normally triggers new US export commitments.
Two things the market got wrong
Both were easy to get wrong reading the June news in real time. First, the mid-2026 "ceasefire" was not durable — Trump and Iran's president signed an MOU on 17 June, a renewed Israel–Hezbollah ceasefire followed on 19 June, and Iran said it had re-closed the strait the very next day, 20 June, citing continued Israeli strikes. What followed was a few weeks of partial, contested easing (the Navy's 27 June widened route near Oman), not a clean de-escalation-then-relapse (Wikipedia, 2026). Second, prices never got close to pre-shock levels — analysts had projected 2026 JKM to average roughly $9-10/MMBtu before the crisis; even at its softest point in the second quarter, JKM stayed in double digits well above that baseline. The round-trip was real but partial, not a return to normal.
Why the premium didn't unwind
Every easing signal compressed the spread despite no corresponding change in the physical dependence on Hormuz. The market has repeatedly priced Hormuz easing as more durable than it turned out to be — each signal (the June MOU, the ceasefire, the widened route) compressed the spread before the next reversal reopened it. That is a different claim than "the market treats Hormuz as reversible"; it is closer to a market that keeps under-pricing how contested the strait's reopening actually is.
Prices never fully retrace.
The production loss may prove temporary. The dependence on Hormuz is structural — there is no pipeline bypass for Qatari LNG at all.
What actually happened in Qatar
QatarEnergy's force majeure, declared 4 March 2026 after strikes ceased production two days earlier, is usually summarized as "a fifth of global LNG supply left the market" (QatarEnergy, 2026). That figure is real — but it is not the same as "a fifth of Qatar's capacity was destroyed."
Strikes on Ras Laffan physically disabled two of Qatar's fourteen liquefaction trains (Train 4 and Train 6, ~12.8 Mtpa, a 3-5 year repair) (Engineering News-Record [ENR], 2026) — roughly 17% of nameplate capacity, genuinely destroyed, an estimated $20B/year in lost revenue (S&P Global, 2026). But QatarEnergy halted production at the whole complex during the attacks, not just the damaged trains. The "one-fifth of global supply" figure reflects that full halt — most of it temporary, not destroyed. Conflating the two makes the disruption look more structural than it was on the production side.
Qatar's own response read the same distinction from the supply side. It bought 33 cargoes on the US spot market in 2026 — versus just four the year before — to protect its reputation as a reliable supplier, redirecting them to Japan, South Korea, India, Bangladesh and Taiwan, while force majeure fell directly on long-term contracts with China, South Korea, Italy and Belgium (OilPrice, 2026; The New Arab, 2026). The buyers who got substitute cargoes and the buyers who got force majeure notices were both Qatari customers. The difference was contractual priority, not production capability.
Europe's thinner cushion
Europe's cushion was already thinner than usual before Hormuz moved TTF at all. Russian pipeline exports to the EU had fallen from 157 bcm/year in 2021 to 54 bcm by 2024 (Bruegel, 2025); the last major transit route, via Ukraine, lapsed in January 2025, leaving TurkStream as the only remaining channel, around 15 bcm/year (Euronews, 2025; TASS, 2026). That erosion left TTF sensitive enough that Hormuz alone moved the benchmark 55-70% in March, versus the ~20% the Ukraine lapse produced on its own (Euronews, 2025). Russia set the terrain; Hormuz is what detonated on it.
Confidence & limits
This is an observed pattern, not a controlled measurement. March–June prices were validated through NotebookLM against primary sources. July–August extend the observed trajectory using weekly market reporting (Global LNG Hub, LNGPriceIndex.com) and carry lower confidence. One production assumption was overturned during adversarial review: an earlier working assumption ("the undamaged 83% kept producing but was stranded") was checked against primary reporting and found wrong — QatarEnergy halted the entire Ras Laffan complex rather than continuing production on the undamaged trains. The interpretation presented here is the one that survived that challenge.
The molecule recovered faster than confidence. That difference is where the premium still lives.
References
Bruegel. (2025). The end of Russian gas transit via Ukraine and options for the EU.
CNBC. (2026, March 3). LNG price reporting.
Engineering News-Record. (2026). Ras Laffan train-damage assessment: Trains 4 and 6, mega-train design risk.
Euronews. (2025, January). TTF price reaction to the Ukraine gas transit lapse.
Global LNG Hub. (2026). Weekly JKM/TTF/Henry Hub price updates, March–July 2026.
Kpler. (2026). Shock-onset price data (10 March 2026) and Russian pipeline exports to Europe, 2021–2025 trend.
LNGPriceIndex.com. (2026, August). JKM/TTF/Henry Hub snapshot, 31 July–2 August 2026.
OilPrice. (2026, July 30). Qatar turns to American LNG after Iran war cripples Ras Laffan.
QatarEnergy. (2026, March 4). Force majeure declaration on Ras Laffan LNG production and the Strait of Hormuz closure [Public statement].
S&P Global. (2026). QatarEnergy repair-timeline and revenue-loss estimate: Trains 4 and 6, ~12.8 Mtpa.
TASS. (2026). TurkStream pipeline volumes, 2026.
The New Arab. (2026). QatarEnergy's 33-cargo US spot purchase to offset Hormuz disruption.
U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2026). Henry Hub spot price series.
Wikipedia. (2026). 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis. (Aggregating Reuters, Maritime Executive, and Lloyd's List ship-tracking reports.)