The explosion ripped through a liquefied natural gas facility outside Doha at 3:42 a.m. local time. The blast killed 13 workers, injured dozens, and sent a fireball visible from the city’s skyline. Qatar, the world’s second largest LNG exporter, has shut down the plant indefinitely. For the United Kingdom, which imports roughly 5% of its gas from Qatar, this is more than a tragedy. It is a stress test for a system already straining under geopolitical tension.
Let us be clear about the physics. A cubic metre of LNG carries roughly 600 times the energy of natural gas at standard pressure. When containment fails, the energy releases catastrophically. This is not a rare event. In 2020, a similar explosion in Texas killed five. In 2022, a fire at Freeport LNG shut down 2 billion cubic feet per day of capacity. These incidents cluster. They are becoming more frequent as infrastructure ages and demand for gas rises.
London’s review of energy security protocols is overdue. The UK holds 12 days of gas storage, among the lowest in Europe. Germany holds 90. The difference is not a policy choice. It is a physical reality. When the wind stops blowing and the gas stops flowing, the grid relies on stored energy. Twelve days is a buffer, not a safety margin. One explosion in the Persian Gulf, one cold snap, one pipeline failure, and the lights go out.
The government’s response will likely focus on diversification. More North Sea drilling. More imported LNG from the United States. But these are stopgaps. The fundamental problem is thermodynamic. Fossil fuels are concentrated energy stores formed over millions of years. We are burning through them in centuries. Each new extraction site has diminishing returns. Each new shipping route adds vulnerability. The Qatar tragedy is a reminder that the energy system is a network of leaky pipes and ticking bombs.
We need a transition, not a patch. The UK has the technical capability to generate 60% of its electricity from renewables by 2030. The grid can be stabilised with batteries and pumped hydro. The cost of solar has fallen 90% in a decade. Wind is now cheaper than gas per kilowatt hour. The barriers are political, not physical. Every delay, every subsidy for fossil fuels, every new gas field, is a bet against physics. Physics does not negotiate.
Meanwhile, the bodies are being identified. Families in India, Bangladesh, the Philippines are being told their sons and daughters will not come home. The explosion happened at a facility designed to feed Europe’s energy hunger. We are all complicit. The question is whether we will use this moment to change or simply rebuild the same fragile system.
The climate is warming. The biosphere is declining. And yet we cling to molecules that burn. This is not a political opinion. It is a statement of fact. The only response that honours the dead is to accelerate the transition to an energy system that does not kill people at 3:42 in the morning.
