Business
In Qatar, Energy Sector Damage Is Severe, and the Way Back Will Be Long
In Doha, the stranded gas tanker Rasheeda has become a dark joke.
For more than two months, the vessel has drifted in circles in the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying the liquefied natural gas that serves as the lifeblood of Qatar’s economy. Residents track the ship on maritime apps and ask one another: “Where is Rasheeda today?”
The looping tanker has become a symbol of the paralysis gripping global energy supplies — a crisis that has cost Qatar billions in lost revenue and helped create energy shortages worldwide.
Qatar, one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, has seen its industry hobbled since war erupted in the Middle East nearly 11 weeks ago and Iranian strikes damaged critical infrastructure. Even facilities that remain intact have shut down because fuel cannot move through the closed Strait of Hormuz.
Since the war began, ships have tried just about everything to get out of the gulf, from calling in high-level diplomatic favors to hand-stitching Pakistani flags, hoping ties to the country mediating the U.S.-Iranian negotiations might secure safe passage.
During a week in Qatar, I interviewed more than a dozen people with knowledge of Qatar’s L.N.G. operations. Sensitivity in Qatar about the scarring of the energy industry is high. So most of the people requested anonymity to speak openly about QatarEnergy — the powerful state-owned energy giant that is the backbone of the economy. The details and observations about the state of Qatar’s L.N.G. industry stem from these conversations.
The consensus from these discussions was that even if the strait reopened tomorrow, Qatari L.N.G. exports would remain crippled for months and most likely impaired for years.
The biggest obstacle is technical. Replacement parts for infrastructure damaged by Iranian attacks can take up to five years to procure. At the same time, global shipping companies no longer trust the route through the strait, potentially leaving much of Qatar’s remaining exports stranded.
QatarEnergy did not respond to requests for comment.
The damage to Qatari gas infrastructure was inflicted in March, when Iran launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ras Laffan, the country’s L.N.G. production hub. Most were intercepted, but three of the 20 projectiles penetrated defenses and struck L.N.G. trains — the massive liquefaction units that supercool gas for transport.
Rashid Al-Mohanadi, a former engineer who worked on one of the damaged units, remembered the night of the attack. Looking north from his home outside Doha, he saw the sky over Ras Laffan flash with interceptor missiles. The explosions rolled outward like shock waves, rattling the windows and doors of his house. When he stepped outside, the horizon was thick with black smoke.
“That was the moment I realized something had gotten through,” he said.
The facility was already largely idle because Iran had shut the Strait of Hormuz weeks earlier. Experts say the timing most likely spared the plant from further damage, as the lines were not operating under full pressure. Even so, Iran appeared to have hit what engineers describe as the “heart” of L.N.G. liquefaction trains.
The two heavily damaged units accounted for about 17 percent of Ras Laffan’s production. QatarEnergy has indicated that restoring full capacity could take three to five years. Some analysts believe that the estimate is high, but most agree that the recovery will take years.
The strikes appeared to have damaged the main cryogenic heat exchangers, precision machines that perform the final cooling of the gas and whose manufacturing is dominated by a single U.S. company, a unit of the conglomerate Honeywell. Replacement units can take four to five years to obtain.
The heat exchangers are a relatively small target within the Ras Laffan complex, which is more than twice the size of San Francisco, suggesting the strike was aimed at inflicting lasting damage.
Even for infrastructure that survived, getting fuel to market will remain difficult. Unlike the United Arab Emirates and Oman, which have coastlines on the Arabian Sea or Gulf of Oman, Qatar is uniquely vulnerable. All of its maritime infrastructure sits deep inside the Persian Gulf, leaving it without an alternative route to open water.
Roughly 1,600 vessels remain trapped near the Strait of Hormuz, carrying L.N.G., oil and fuel byproducts. After reports that Iran was allowing Pakistani-flagged vessels through, some crews stitched together makeshift flags from scraps of cloth found on board. It did not work.
For shippers, the danger will persist even if a cease-fire holds. Tehran has claimed to have seeded the waterway with undersea explosives. Until international mine-clearing units or Iranian authorities provide credible guarantees of safety, shipping companies are likely to be reluctant to risk their crews’ lives.
The Philippines, which supplies much of the world’s merchant-mariner work force, has begun directing crewing agencies to stop sending Filipino sailors into the conflict zone. Fears of further Iranian aggression and a lack of insurance coverage for such voyages threaten to keep vessels away. That leaves QatarEnergy in a bind.
Qatar cannot simply restart production until it secures commitments from shipping lines to return for new cargoes. If gas continues to accumulate with nowhere to go, storage tanks could overflow, forcing shutdowns that risk permanent damage. Because of that bottleneck, the entire export system is unlikely to return to normal for at least three to four months after the strait reopens.
The full extent of the damage is still unclear, but given the scale of the repairs required, “we’re talking reduced production until the end of the decade,” said Henning Gloystein, a managing director for energy at Eurasia Group, a political risk research firm. “It’s a significant tightening of the market.”
Even if the immediate crisis is resolved, many in the energy industry think that the Strait of Hormuz will not return to what it was. Support is growing for enormous infrastructure projects designed to bypass the strait, potentially redrawing the Middle East’s energy map.
One frequently discussed proposal is a pipeline across the Arabian Peninsula to a new liquefaction and export terminal in Jeddah on the Red Sea. Another would extend pipelines south to the Omani port of Duqm, allowing Qatari gas to be loaded directly onto ships in the Arabian Sea.
But pipelines carry geopolitical risks of their own. Relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia — through which any overland route would have to pass — are warm now but scarred by a yearslong rift in which the kingdom cut off diplomatic and transport ties. Pipeline infrastructure is also vulnerable to missile and drone attacks.
For now, the immediate urgency is reopening the waterway itself. “Priority No. 1 is getting the strait open,” said Mr. Al-Mohanadi, the engineer who used to work at Ras Laffan. “Then it becomes about finding a mechanism to keep it open.”
After nearly a decade at a QatarEnergy-Exxon Mobil joint venture, Mr. Al-Mohanadi joined the Doha-based Center for International Policy Research as a vice president. He said one option was to create a multilateral maritime insurance “piggy bank” — a private and sovereign-backed fund that would insure ships transiting dangerous waterways such as the strait.
He also said there was growing pressure for Asia’s largest energy consumers to take a more active role in regional maritime security. For decades, the United States has served as the Gulf’s de facto guarantor, maintaining military bases across the region. Mr. Al-Mohanadi argues that the burden should increasingly be shared by Asian “middle powers” most dependent on Middle Eastern energy exports.
“We’re in a period of history where it’s a jungle, and that is threatening global energy security and entire economies,” he said recently over a late-night coffee at a hotel overlooking the waters off the northern tip of Doha Bay.
Near the end of our conversation, Mr. Al-Mohanadi opened a maritime tracking app on his phone. He typed in “Rasheeda,” and out emerged a rendering of the tanker, still endlessly circling the gulf. “Poor Rasheeda,” he said, looking down at the screen. “At this point, she must be so tired.”
Residents of Monterey Park voted overwhelmingly to ban data centers on election day, making the San Gabriel Valley city the first in the nation to do so by public vote.
As of Wednesday, 86% of votes were in favor of Measure NDC, the city ban, according to the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk.
Other cities and towns have passed moratoriums on data centers, as a wave of opposition sweeps the country. But the Monterey Park vote can only be overturned by another ballot measure, making it the most permanent data center ban in a jurisdiction.
Monterey Park’s City Council had already banned data centers by ordinance, after a proposed 247,000-square-foot data center met an outpouring of public anger and concern. The developer withdrew that plan.
That facility would have been less than 500 feet away from the nearest home, and would have used three times the electricity of the entire 60,000-person city. Residents said it would have caused noise and air pollution and driven up electricity rates.
“This ensures long-lasting protections for current and future generations,” Amy Wong, co-founder of the group San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action, said of the vote. “It means that future city councils cannot overturn a data center ban, even if data center developers wanted to spend money to fund pro-data center candidates.”
The measure had no formal opposition. The developer of the proposed facility, investment firm HMC StratCap, said it wouldn’t engage in the ballot fight when it withdrew in March.
The Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, expressed disappointment in the vote.
“It sends a signal that the area is closed for business, both for data centers and for other significant economic development projects,” state policy director Khara Boender said.
“It deprives local residents of the opportunity to compete for jobs and investment, while also causing the area to relinquish substantial long-term economic investment, high-wage jobs, and critical tax revenue to neighboring areas or other states.”
SGV Progressive Action worked with hyperlocal groups including No Data Center Monterey Park to rally support for the measure.
The group is now focused on stopping data center proposals in the City of Industry and fighting a move by City of Industry, Santa Fe Springs, Vernon and City of Commerce to welcome data centers and other industry with fast-tracked permitting and tax incentives.
City of Industry, in the San Gabriel Valley, and Vernon, south of downtown L.A., are primarily industrial areas, each with around 300 permanent residents. They are employment centers, and tens of thousands of workers commute in daily.
There has been little vocal opposition to data centers among the few residents of these cities. Wong said the protest is primarily coming from the surrounding neighborhoods.
“If a data center gets built in City of Industry, residents across the region would bear the brunt of pollution and increased utility costs,” Wong said, noting that it is surrounded by 16 other cities and unincorporated communities.
Data center proposals have been limited in California compared to Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Illinois and Arizona, which sit at the center of a recent boom in hyperscaler facilities to power artificial intelligence.
California has the third-most data centers in the country, with 300, but high electricity rates, expensive land and regulatory hurdles mean that fewer, and smaller, facilities are currently planned than in other hotspots.
That doesn’t mean opposition hasn’t been fierce. In Coachella and Imperial County, residents are showing up in droves to protest local proposals.
In the San Gabriel Valley, Montebello, El Monte and Baldwin Park have all enacted temporary moratoriums, and Alhambra recently banned data centers as part of a zoning code update.
Wong said she hoped the ballot measure vote would galvanize the opposition. “The vote is a testament to the people power of our region,” she said. “Our region is worth protecting, and we won’t let data centers determine our future.”
A rule intended to prevent rent gouging in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires has lapsed in Los Angeles County, possibly exposing some renters to hikes.
The executive order that blocked rent increases was issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom amid the devastating wildfires last year. Under the order, landlords couldn’t increase rents by more than 10% above their prefire levels.
The rule, which was supposed to be temporary and was repeatedly extended, ended Friday after a vote to extend it again failed to garner enough votes. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes Pacific Palisades, sounded the alarm in a motion to extend price protections that failed to pass at the Board of Supervisors’ May 19 meeting.
“These price gouging protections continue to be necessary as construction and rebuilding continue, and as thousands of people remain displaced,” the motion said. “Families which signed short-term leases could face drastic price increases of 50% or more without further price gouging protection.”
Los Angeles County is home to more than 1 million rental properties, though not all of them needed protection from the new rule. There are already stricter rent increase caps for many residences, depending on the location, type and age of the building. Despite the rent control in the region, the people of Los Angeles pay among the highest rents in the country.
It is uncertain whether renters will face rapidly rising rents now that the protection has lapsed. But some real estate experts and policymakers said there was no need for the temporary rule that was part of the governor’s state of emergency.
Supervisors Kathryn Barger, Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell abstained from voting on the motion to extend the protection, while Supervisors Hilda Solis and Horvath supported it.
“I abstained because I did not see sufficient evidence to justify extending this emergency ordinance, nor did I see evidence to eliminate it entirely,” Hahn said.
Barger’s office said she supported allowing the protections to sunset while waiting to see whether new information emerged.
“Market data already shows countywide rents are only about 2% above pre-emergency levels and rental inventory has grown,” Barger representative Helen E. Chavez Garcia said. “The Supervisor is also mindful of the burden these ongoing protections place on small property owners throughout the county.”
Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There haven’t been steep rent hikes in neighborhoods within three miles of the Palisades fire, according to a Times analysis of data from Zillow, the property listing company.
In ZIP Codes within three miles of the Palisades fire, rent increased 4.8% from December 2024 to April 2025. In areas around the Eaton fire, which destroyed swaths of Altadena, rent jumped 5.2% in the same period.
In L.A. County, ZIP Codes farther from the fires saw only about a 2% increase.
A landlords representative, Jesus Rojas of the Apartment Owners Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, told the supervisors during public comment at the meeting that the county’s rent-gouging rules have “long outlived the emergency they were intended to address” and are now being “wrongfully used to harm thousands of rental housing providers throughout the county.”
“There is no proof that multifamily rental housing providers are hugely increasing rents for impacted homeowners,” Rojas said.
Indeed, there are strong signs that the property market in the Los Angeles area has at last begun to cool.
L.A. metro-area rent prices recently fell to a four-year low, with the median rent slipping to $2,167 in December.
Meanwhile, condominium sales had their slowest start of the year in decades. Condo sales in Los Angeles have plummeted to a 20-year low, with fewer than 2,000 units sold in January and February — the worst start to the year since 2005.
Newsom defended the price-gouging protections shortly after they went into effect.
“In the days following the Los Angeles firestorms, we worked quickly to protect Los Angeles survivors from any form of exploitation,” he said in February 2025. “The state has the tools in place to not only block price gouging during this emergency, but also to prosecute bad actors.”
The Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs said it received more than 2,000 complaints after the fires, alleging that retailers and landlords were taking advantage of people put in hardship by their losses, and sent out more than 2,000 cease-and-desist letters to businesses and landlords for alleged price gouging, said Morine Merritt, who oversees department investigations into consumer and real estate fraud.
“Close to 90% of the complaints that we received involved allegations of rent increases,” Merritt said in an interview. Now that the fire-related protections have expired, existing laws and “regular market conditions determine price increases for goods and services, including rents,” she said.
Crackdowns on fire-related rent gouging have been rare, said Chelsea Kirk of the activist organization the Rent Brigade, which analyzed L.A. County’s rental market in the year after the fires. It reported 18,360 potential examples of price gouging in listings but said that few lawsuits had been filed by authorities so far.
Last week, Rent Brigade announced what it said was the first private civil lawsuit brought by a family that claimed to be rent-gouged in the aftermath of the wildfires. Plaintiffs Randall and Candy Renick, whose Altadena home was damaged, said they were charged nearly three times the maximum permitted rate for nearly 10 months. They seek restitution of $96,000 plus civil penalties and attorneys’ fees.
The rental market has probably stabilized since the fires, Kirk said, but other families may still be “locked into illegal rents” that they agreed to pay when they were in a rush to find housing after they were displaced.
Dear Mr. Pelley:
I meant what I said in my letter last week to the 60 Minutes team: joining 60 Minutes is the honor of my career and I am grateful to be working alongside the people who have contributed to the most important television journalism brand this country has ever produced. While I’m new to 60 Minutes, I’ve devoted my career to investigative journalism and storytelling. I started this job excited to collaborate and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of the 60 Minutes veterans, with you among them. For that reason, one of the first things I did in my new role was call you to talk and invite you to dinner. It is a profound disappointment that you rejected that overture and chose ambush instead. Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday’s performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation-demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal.
Despite yesterday’s misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested in such a path.
Your antipathy to the future of the show has come through loud and clear. And I have heard you. I therefore write on behalf of CBS News, Inc. (“CBS”) to inform you that your employment with CBS is terminated for cause effective immediately. Enclosed is your formal termination letter.
Sincerely,
Nick Bilton
Executive Producer, 60 Minutes
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