Qatar posts widest quarterly budget deficit in nearly a decade

Qatar’s second-quarter budget deficit hit 21.2 billion riyals, roughly $5.8 billion, the largest quarterly shortfall the Gulf state has recorded since late 2016. The culprit is familiar but the scale is not: natural gas revenue cratered after geopolitical disruptions effectively shut down the country’s primary LNG export corridor. To put that number in perspective, the Q2 gap was nearly double the Q1 deficit of 10.3 billion riyals ($2.83 billion). Combined, the first half of 2026 produced a cumulative shortfall of 31.5 billion riyals, a figure that already surpasses Qatar’s full-year budget projection of 21.8 billion riyals. What went wrong Qatar’s Ministry of Finance pointed to the fallout from a US-Iran conflict in late February 2026, which disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. For a country that routes the vast majority of its LNG tankers through that narrow waterway, the consequences were immediate and severe. Quarterly LNG exports plummeted from approximately 20 million tons to less than 2 million tons. That is a decline north of 90%, a figure that would be alarming for any commodity exporter but is existential for one where energy accounts for roughly 80% of govern...