The Department of Energy published its August 2026 natural gas trade report on 22 October, along with a spreadsheet that lists every LNG cargo leaving a US terminal: date, terminal, authorisation holder, vessel, destination country and volume. With eight months of 2026 now in that file, it is possible to see where American LNG went after QatarEnergy halted liquefaction in early March, and how much of it Europe received during the months when it was supposed to be refilling storage.
TEI aggregated the DOE cargo records by month and destination region, using the same UN M49 grouping that DOE uses in its own summary tables (Turkiye counted in Europe, Egypt in Africa, the Gulf states and Jordan in Asia). Our August totals match DOE's published regional figures to the decimal: 269.3 Bcf to Europe, 158.7 Bcf to Asia, 55.9 Bcf to Africa and 30.6 Bcf to Latin America and the Caribbean.
What happened in March
QatarEnergy stopped producing LNG at the start of March and on 4 March declared force majeure to affected buyers, according to the Qatar News Agency. TEI covered the shipping and production side of that disruption [in June](/articles/2026-06-16-qatar-lng-hormuz-and-ras-laffan.html). On 24 March the company said attacks on Ras Laffan on 18 and 19 March had damaged two LNG trains, and that it needed to declare force majeure on some long-term contracts, naming counterparties in Italy, Belgium, South Korea and China.
Most Qatari LNG has historically been sold to Asian buyers under long-term contracts. Those buyers had to find replacement cargoes, and the US Gulf Coast was where uncommitted and destination-flexible supply was growing fastest.
The monthly shares
The share of US LNG exports going to Asia, by month in 2026, by TEI's calculation from the DOE cargo file:
- January: 7.1% (38.2 Bcf of 539.1 Bcf)
- February: 14.6%
- March: 25.1%
- April: 30.3%
- May: 41.3% (207.6 Bcf of 502.7 Bcf)
- June: 38.8%
- July: 38.9%
- August: 30.8% (158.7 Bcf of 514.5 Bcf)
Europe's share moved the other way, from 82.4% in January to 35.7% in June, then back to 52.3% in August. In June Asia took 201.9 Bcf against Europe's 185.8 Bcf, and in July the two were level at about 201 Bcf each. The DOE file shows Asia-bound volumes exceeding Europe-bound volumes in only two earlier stretches since 2016: the summer and autumn of 2021, and May to August 2024. So the reversal was not unprecedented, but its starting point was. In January 2026 Europe took more than eleven times as much US LNG as Asia did.
The winter months help explain that starting point. January was the month of winter storm Fern, when the Henry Hub spot price averaged $7.72 per MMBtu according to EIA, and when the United Kingdom and Turkiye together received 173.3 Bcf of US LNG. Across January and February the two countries took 268.0 Bcf. From April to August their combined total was 41.0 Bcf, and Turkiye received no US cargoes at all in June, July or August.
Where the Asian volumes went
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan together received 67.0 Bcf of US LNG in January and February. In May, June and July they received 332.7 Bcf, roughly five times as much in a period half again as long. India went from 53.9 Bcf in April–July 2025 to 162.8 Bcf in April–July 2026. Thailand received 85.5 Bcf over the same four months against 29.9 Bcf, Taiwan 126.3 Bcf against 49.2 Bcf, and Singapore 49.0 Bcf against 3.6 Bcf. China, which took only 0.5 Bcf of US LNG in all of 2025, received 12.5 Bcf from June to August.
Egypt is classified as Africa in the DOE tables, so it does not appear in the Asian total, but its growth was as large as any Asian buyer's. It took 254.7 Bcf from April to July, against 133.4 Bcf a year earlier, and was the single largest destination for US LNG in June, July and August.
By terminal, the Asia-bound cargoes from March through August came mostly from the Louisiana and Texas plants: Sabine Pass sent 302.2 Bcf to Asian buyers, Corpus Christi 186.4 Bcf, Cameron 158.1 Bcf, Plaquemines 153.5 Bcf and Freeport 119.8 Bcf. Cove Point in Maryland sent 85.0 Bcf.
What Europe received while it was refilling
Total US LNG exports were 2,080.0 Bcf from April to July 2026, up 20.5% from 1,725.9 Bcf in the same months of 2025. In DOE's terminal-level data, Plaquemines and Corpus Christi account for 281.4 Bcf of the 354.1 Bcf increase. Yet the 27 EU member states received less. By TEI's calculation they took 876.9 Bcf of US LNG in April–July 2026 against 1,019.9 Bcf a year earlier, a drop of 143.0 Bcf, or 14%.
That is about 4.05 bcm. Converted at EIA's average heat content for US natural gas of 1,036 Btu per cubic foot, it is roughly 43 TWh, or 3.8 percentage points of the EU's working storage capacity of about 1,133 TWh (the capacity implied by GIE AGSI+ reporting 849 TWh in store at 74.9% full). Not every molecule that arrives at a European terminal goes into storage, and some of the cargoes that went to Asia would otherwise have been bought by other suppliers for Europe, so this is a comparison of scale and not a one-for-one accounting of the storage shortfall. It does show that the extra US output in the injection months went east, and that the EU's US supply in those months fell.
The individual country figures make the point more plainly. Spain received 66.8 Bcf in April–July against 115.9 Bcf a year earlier. France got 91.9 Bcf against 142.8 Bcf, the Netherlands 202.6 Bcf against 250.8 Bcf, Germany 112.7 Bcf against 138.7 Bcf and Belgium 27.7 Bcf against 47.5 Bcf. Italy went the other way, from 123.1 Bcf to 195.3 Bcf; it was one of the countries named in QatarEnergy's March force majeure notice. Poland was roughly flat at 82.9 Bcf against 78.9 Bcf.
ACER's monitoring report on the 2026 gas summer, published today, sets the European side of this out from the import end. The agency says EU underground storage was at 28% of capacity at the end of winter 2025–26, against 34% a year earlier, and reached 75% by 21 October. Total EU LNG imports fell 14% over the summer, no significant Qatari volumes reached the EU, and US LNG now accounts for about 30% of total EU gas supply. ACER puts the extra cost of the Middle East conflict to Europe's gas import bill at €18–33 billion for the same quantity of gas, with spot hub prices close to €90/MWh in mid-October.
August
The August data break the pattern. Europe-bound US LNG rose 34% from July to 269.3 Bcf and Asia-bound volumes fell 21% to 158.7 Bcf. France received 36.5 Bcf, more than double its July volume; Germany rose 72% to 35.5 Bcf and Spain 40% to 33.2 Bcf. India fell 53% to 21.8 Bcf and Japan 30% to 32.8 Bcf. For the EU-27 alone, August volumes were 264.0 Bcf, essentially the same as the 263.1 Bcf of August 2025.
DOE's report also flags the commercial character of these flows. In August 7% of US LNG exports were spot cargoes, defined by DOE as one-time transactions for near-term delivery. All of the spot volume went to Europe: 42% of the cargoes to France were spot, 34% to Belgium and 15% to Italy, while none of the August shipments to Asian countries were. For the year to date, 16% of Europe-bound US LNG was spot against 7% for Asia. The Asian swing seems to have run mainly through portfolio and long-term offtakers redirecting contracted volumes, and the August recovery in Europe leaned more on one-off purchases.
Free-on-board export prices tell a similar story with a caveat. DOE reports the average August FOB price of US LNG to Europe at $8.38 per MMBtu, up 5% from July, and to Asia at $6.46, down 20%. These are prices at the US terminal, including commodity cost and liquefaction fees, and they mostly reflect contract formulas indexed to Henry Hub plus a fixed fee. They are not delivered prices in Tokyo or Rotterdam. Henry Hub itself averaged $2.78 in August according to EIA, so the FOB price to European buyers was about three times the domestic benchmark.
Storage and the rules
GIE's AGSI+ data put EU storage at 74.9% on gas day 25 October, a little above the level [TEI looked at in early October](/articles/2026-10-09-eu-winter-gas-storage-entsog-lng.html), with 849 TWh in store. Germany was at 61.6%, France at 87.4% and Italy at 90.6%.
Regulation (EU) 2025/1733 kept the 90% filling target for each member state but allows it to be met at any point between 1 October and 1 December, rather than by 1 November. A member state may deviate by up to 10 percentage points in difficult filling conditions, with a further five points available in specific technical cases, and the Commission can widen the general deviation by up to five points for one filling season by delegated act if market conditions remain unfavourable. With the EU aggregate at 75% in late October and Germany in the low 60s, several countries will be relying on those deviations this year. ACER expects the EU's additional LNG this winter to come mainly from the United States, given reduced Qatari supply and the phase-out of Russian LNG from January 2027.
What the US data can and cannot show
EIA's October Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts US LNG exports of 17.6 Bcf/d in 2026 and 18.6 Bcf/d in 2027. The DOE cargo file puts January–August 2026 at 4,200.1 Bcf, or 17.3 Bcf/d, up 21% on the same period of 2025. Year to date, Europe's total intake of US LNG is almost unchanged at 2,332.8 Bcf against 2,351.5 Bcf, Asia's is up 87% to 1,186.3 Bcf and Africa's up 86% to 454.1 Bcf. The growth in US output went almost entirely to buyers outside Europe.
Destination in the DOE file is the country where the cargo was delivered as reported by the authorisation holder. Diversions after departure and onward re-exports from European terminals are not captured. Volumes are reported in cubic feet and do not adjust for differences in heat content between cargoes, which is why we use EIA's national average when converting to energy units.
September data from DOE are due in late November. If August's reversal held through September and October, the EU will have gone into the heating season with most of the US supply growth of 2026 going elsewhere during April to July, and some of it coming back only once the injection season was nearly over.