Orlen Terminates One of Its Long-Term QatarEnergy LNG Contracts

Poland’s Orlen has ended one of its two long-term liquefied natural gas supply agreements with QatarEnergy, becoming the first buyer to walk away from a contract with the Qatari producer since it declared force majeure on exports earlier this year, Bloomberg and Offshore Technology reported on November 10.

For QatarEnergy’s ownership, leadership and full LNG portfolio, see The Daily Energy’s QatarEnergy profile.

A 2009 deal unwound

The terminated contract dates back to June 2009, when Polskie Górnictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo (PGNiG) — folded into the Orlen group after a 2022 merger — signed an agreement with QatarEnergy, then known as Qatar Liquefied Gas Company, for up to 1 million tonnes of LNG a year, equivalent to roughly 15.3 terawatt-hours. The deal was due to run until 2034 and priced deliveries against Brent crude, a formula Orlen says it values at around €570 million ($638 million) a year at current prices. Under the contract’s terms, the termination takes formal effect after a 60-day run-off period, during which the agreement technically stays in force.

Why Orlen pulled the trigger now

QatarEnergy declared force majeure on a swath of its LNG delivery obligations in March, after Iranian drone strikes on production infrastructure at Ras Laffan Industrial City and Mesaieed forced Doha to idle liquefaction trains and effectively halted tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which all of Qatar’s LNG exports, roughly a fifth of the global total, must pass. Orlen disclosed last week that it expected disrupted cargoes to resume only around mid-November, after months of delay.

Rather than wait out a contract whose economics had already turned unfavourable, Orlen chose to cancel outright. Oil-linked LNG pricing of the kind written into the 2009 deal has looked increasingly expensive next to the gas-indexed contracts Orlen has signed more recently with American suppliers: analysts tracking the shift put long-term US LNG at roughly $6–7 per million British thermal units, about half the cost of comparable oil-linked Qatari volumes at today’s crude prices. Brent itself has fallen alongside hopes for an Iran peace deal, trading below $94 a barrel this week after highs above $120 earlier in the war — a price swing that has only widened the gap in Orlen’s favour.

What’s left of Poland’s Qatari gas

The move does not end Orlen’s relationship with QatarEnergy, whose LNG portfolio spans long-term deals with buyers worldwide. A second long-term contract, also for up to 1 million tonnes a year through 2034 but priced on gas-market formulas rather than oil, remains in place. Orlen said the cancellation “does not affect the security of gas supplies,” pointing to its own upstream production and to long-term agreements elsewhere in its portfolio — including first-phase cargoes from Venture Global’s Plaquemines export plant in Louisiana and gas sourced from Norwegian offshore fields — as sufficient to cover the group’s needs. QatarEnergy had not commented publicly at the time of publication.

Part of a broader European pattern

Orlen’s decision lands as several European buyers reassess the economics of decades-old, oil-indexed Qatari supply contracts signed long before the US LNG export boom. The IEA has warned that a tight global gas market could persist into 2027 as new liquefaction capacity ramps up more slowly than demand, a backdrop against which buyers are weighing contractual flexibility as much as headline price. Poland, which cut its dependence on Russian pipeline gas after 2022 and built out import capacity through its Świnoujście LNG terminal and a floating unit in the Gulf of Gdańsk, has leaned on a mix of Qatari, American and Norwegian supply to diversify its sources — a strategy now being tested by Qatar’s own months of supply trouble.

The termination is a symbolic marker as much as a commercial one: it is the first instance of a QatarEnergy long-term buyer using the force majeure period to exit a contract outright rather than simply absorb delayed or reduced cargoes, and it adds to signs that Qatar’s year of war-driven disruption is reshaping how European buyers weigh long-term, oil-linked LNG against more flexible alternatives.

Sources

• Bloomberg, “Poland’s Orlen Terminates LNG Supply Deal with Qatar Amid War,” November 10, 2026 — first-buyer cancellation, contract background.
• Offshore Technology, “Orlen terminates QatarEnergy LNG deal,” November 11, 2026 — contract volume, pricing and notice-period details.
• The Deep Dive, “Orlen Terminates 2009 QatarEnergy LNG Contract After Months of Force Majeure,” November 2026 — contract signing year and expiry.

Illustrative image. Photo: Virtual-Pano, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — source