Europe's New Hormuz Problem: How the Russia Break Created Gulf Gas Dependence
Before February 2022, European energy security analysis treated the Persian Gulf as a significant but secondary concern. The primary vulnerabilities ran through Ukrainian pipeline corridors and Russian supply decisions. Hormuz was a risk to Asian energy markets, to oil prices globally, and to a residual flow of LNG from Qatar to a handful of European regasification terminals that had been built for flexibility rather than baseload supply. The invasion of Ukraine changed this with a speed that European energy planners had not fully modeled. By the end of 2022, Europe was competing in global LNG markets for volumes that included substantial Qatari supply, and its exposure to events in the Persian Gulf had become structurally different from anything its policy frameworks had anticipated.
The reconfiguration of European gas supply is well documented in trade flow data. Russian pipeline gas, which had supplied roughly 40 percent of European consumption, was replaced through a combination of Norwegian and Algerian pipeline gas, American LNG, and LNG from Qatar and other Gulf producers. The replacement was achieved, at enormous cost and with significant industrial disruption, over the course of roughly two years. The result is a European gas supply system that is less dependent on Russia and more dependent on global LNG markets — which means more exposed to anything that disrupts LNG transit through Hormuz.
Qatar’s long-term LNG contracts with European buyers, signed or expanded in the aftermath of the Russian supply crisis, commit European regasification terminals to receiving Qatari volumes for periods of fifteen to twenty years. These commitments are the foundation of the Qatar LNG expansion program — the investment in new liquefaction capacity that will significantly increase North Field output by the end of this decade. The contracts provide the revenue certainty that justifies the capital expenditure. They also create a structural link between European energy security and Hormuz stability that did not exist before 2022 at anything like the same scale.
The European gas storage policy developed in response to the Russian supply crisis — requiring member states to maintain minimum storage fills before winter — provides some buffer against a short-duration Hormuz disruption. European storage capacity, at high fill levels, represents several months of supplemental supply. A disruption that lasted less than a storage drawdown cycle would be expensive but manageable. A disruption that persisted through a European winter would produce a supply crisis that storage reserves cannot bridge, requiring either demand destruction or emergency measures whose economic costs would be severe.
The irony of European energy policy is that it has traded one geopolitical dependency for another that it does not yet fully appreciate. Russian pipeline gas was vulnerable to a decision made in Moscow, shaped by European political choices and Russian strategic objectives. Qatari LNG is vulnerable to a strait controlled in part by Iran, shaped by US-Iran nuclear diplomacy, Gulf coalition posture, and Iranian domestic politics — all outside European influence. The dependency profile has changed. The dependency has not diminished. European governments that spent 2022 and 2023 declaring the achievement of energy independence have, in the process, created new exposure to a geography their defense frameworks were not designed to address.
NATO’s southeastern flank and the alliance’s Gulf relationships have become more consequential for European energy security than European policymakers have been willing to acknowledge in their public communications. The political preference is to frame energy security as an infrastructure problem — more storage, more regasification terminals, more cables and pipelines — rather than as a geopolitical problem that requires engagement with the conditions that determine whether Qatari gas keeps moving. The infrastructure framing is comfortable. The geopolitical framing requires acknowledging that European energy security now depends partly on the continuation of American naval presence in the Persian Gulf, which is an uncomfortable conclusion for a continent that has spent a decade trying to reduce its security dependence on Washington.
The strait that Europe barely considered in its energy planning is now load-bearing.