Qatar attack, semiconductor supply chain, LNG, helium

Asian technology stocks fell on Thursday as Iran’s recent attacks on Qatar’s Ras Laffan industrial city and rising oil prices soured investor sentiment, fueling concerns about supply chain disruptions across the semiconductor industry.

Materials sourced from Middle Eastern energy markets are widely used in electronics manufacturing, from printed circuit boards to semiconductor process chemicals.

South Korean memory giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics fell 2.23% and 1.8% respectively. Shares of Seoul Semiconductor fell 2.53%.

of Japan Adventist Less than 4%, but Tokyo Electron 1.99 percent lost. Taiwan’s TSMC It had fallen by 2.1 percent.

China’s ‘AI tigers’ Minimax and Knowledge Atlas Technology, known as Zipu, fell 10% and 8%. The slide comes after a surge in Chinese artificial intelligence stocks following upbeat comments from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the promise of AI agents and OpenClaw.

Hong Kong listed shares Alibaba 3.34% fell, but Tencent It has fallen by 6 percent.

“While recent market movements can be attributed almost entirely to the Middle East conflict and rising oil prices, macro risks outweigh the company’s fundamentals for now,” Wei-Sern Ling, senior equity adviser at UBP, told CNBC in an email.

While immediate concerns centered on high oil prices fueling fears of inflation, analysts noted the second-order effects of deepening risk rippling through the semiconductor supply chain.

Wednesday’s missile attack on Qatar Energy’s Ras Laffan Industrial City damaged one of the world’s most important gas hubs and is likely to cause concern for global LNG and helium supply chains.

Helium is a key material for the semiconductor industry, with Qatar producing one-third of the world’s helium supply as a by-product of natural gas processing.

Ongoing disruptions of Qatar’s LNG facilities threaten to further drive up helium prices for semiconductor companies, with no viable alternatives available.

On March 2, state energy giant QatarEnergy, the world’s second-largest LNG exporter, announced it would suspend production at its 77 million tonne per annum (mtpa) facility and force major on LNG shipments.

“Qatar’s gas disruption is tightening supplies of helium, a natural gas byproduct used in semiconductor manufacturing and medical imaging,” analysts at Fitch Ratings wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday.

“Asia’s semiconductor supply chain faces increasing tail risk from helium tightness, as the Iran conflict drags on and Qatar’s natural gas disruption continues,” the analysts added.

Beyond helium, broader petrochemical supply chains are also under scrutiny.

The Gulf region anchors critical systems that support hyperscale infrastructure growth, semiconductor manufacturing and electronics manufacturing. Rising tensions are disrupting high-tech supply chains, said Gartner Semiconductor Supply Chain Analyst Cory Masters.

“Worst-case scenarios for semiconductor fab delays could result in $1.5 to $3 billion in deferred revenue and additional downstream production impacts,” Masters wrote in a note to investors.

— CNBC’s Spencer Kimball contributed to this report.