“It’s having an impact and that impact is going to increase over the next few years. We are seeing projects being delayed simply because they can’t get the equipment delivered on the timescale they used to,” said Candida Scott, an analyst at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

The result could be project delays and cancellations, which occurred recently when Sonatrach, the Algerian state oil company, cancelled the contract of Repsol YPF and Gas Natural to develop the 5000 billion cubic foot Gassi Touil project, citing development delays and cost over-runs.