The shipments of Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels through the Strait of Hormuz could be unhindered despite the current economic blockade by the siege countries, according to global credit rating agency Moody’s.
Expecting that a disruption of Qatari LNG vessels’ ability to transit the Strait of Hormuz is “very unlikely”; Moody’s said Qatar can currently export LNG through the Strait without entering the UAE or Saudi Arabia territorial waters.
The diplomatic dispute has not materially impacted RasGas II-3’s ability to deliver LNG to their customers, and Moody’s does not expect it to do so going forward.
The rating agency affirmed the ‘A1’ guaranteed senior secured debt ratings of RasGas II and RasGas 3, together RasGas II-3. It has also affirmed the ‘A1’ senior secured debt rating and the ‘A2’ senior subordinated debt rating of Nakilat.
The rating actions on RasGas II, RasGas 3 and Nakilat reflect that each is a government-related issuer (GRI) and that the ratings benefit from Moody’s assumption of extraordinary support, if required, from the government to avoid a default on their debt obligations, which leads to a significant uplift from the standalone credit strength, or baseline credit assessment (BCA), of the projects. The BCA for RasGas II-3 is unchanged, and lies within a range of ‘baa1-baa3’. 
The BCA for RasGas II-3 also reflects the project’s compelling commercial and industrial rationale, and the strong competitive position that it enjoys as a world class, low-cost producer of LNG and valuable by-products; it’s generally beneficial project finance structural features, subject to the absence of certain security interests and subject to limitations on the likely effectiveness of certain creditor projections; event risk considerations, including asset-concentration risk and geopolitical risk and the project’s exposure to commodity price risk, although such risks are substantially mitigated by its very strong financial metrics. The ‘a3’ BCA for Nakilat is also unchanged and reflects Moody’s expectation that the availability based nature of revenues generated under its charter agreements would insulate Nakilat, contractually, in most scenarios of disruption caused by the diplomatic dispute.
The BCA for Nakilat also reflects the critical importance of its vessels to their liquefaction company charterers; high quality net cash flows, underpinned by charter payments that are highly resilient and well-matched to operating costs and debt service costs; financial metrics capable of supporting long tenure project finance debt; generally beneficial project finance structural features; certain event risk considerations including exposure to force majeure risks potentially affecting the vessels; and exposure to refinancing risk arising from the bullet maturities of certain program debt facilities, within the term of the financing.

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