The Economic Times
So far in March, the first full month of war, barely six vessels per day on average have traversed the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the world, in either direction. That compares with about 135 a day in normal times, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/30/business/lng-supply-asia-qatar-iran.html?unlocked_article_code=1.XFA.lqMI.t2rjhV0sBl-N&smid=url-share
With a cutoff in shipments imminent, Asian countries, the biggest importers of liquefied natural gas from the Middle East, are already burning more coal and reducing consumption.
Countries across Asia are bracing for a complete cutoff in coming days of Middle Eastern liquefied natural gas, a fuel that underpins power generation and industrial output across much of the region.
“It’s a significant tightening of the market — we’re talking reduced production until the end of the decade,” said Henning Gloystein, managing director for energy at Eurasia Group, a political risk research firm. In Asia, in the next week, “that’s when the actual impact, the physical impact, of nondelivery will begin to happen,” he said.
*Asia’s biggest economies — China, Japan, India and South Korea — and emerging markets like Vietnam and Thailand all rely significantly on L.N.G. for power. *
Countries across Asia that can are switching to oil- and coal-powered electricity generation and in some cases aggressively curtailing consumption. These measures are likely to intensify as the war’s disruption of energy flows drags on, energy experts say.
