Meanwhile, in unrelated news, Australia\u2019s Santos suspended<\/a> production from its Barossa gas project that feeds the Darwin LNG facility. The company said it needed to replace some equipment at the Barossa field, which would take several weeks. This means that some 3.7 million tons in capacity at Darwin LNG has now been disrupted, at the worst possible time. As a result, gas prices are soaring, and they are soaring much higher, much faster than oil.<\/p>\n Related: 3 Defense Stocks To Replenish America\u2019s Depleting Arsenal<\/a><\/p>\n Natural gas prices in Asia have swelled by 143% since February 28, Reuters\u2019 Gavin Maguire reported<\/a> in an article detailing why the natural gas crisis is worse than the oil crisis. European gas prices have gone up by 85%, and while some observers make a point of noting that even with that increase, prices are lower than they were back in 2022, this does not really matter. What matters is the physical availability of natural gas, and that has been compromised much more severely than back in 2022. To add insult to injury, a U.S. federal government official just threatened<\/a> Europe that the administration could make LNG more expensive unless the EU signed the trade deal agreed last year by President Trump and Ursula von der Leyen as it is.<\/p>\n Global natural gas demand has grown much faster than oil demand over the past couple of decades. In fact, per Reuters\u2019 Maguire, gas demand has grown twice as fast as oil demand, according to data from the Energy Institute that took over from BP in compiling a comprehensive annual global energy outlook. A lot of that growth has been attributed to countries\u2019 efforts to replace coal with a fuel that burns a lot more cleanly, reducing air pollution and politicians\u2019 favorite boogeyman, CO2 emissions.<\/p>\n Now, with natural gas getting scarce, some Asian nations are going back<\/a> to coal despite warnings from pro-transition analysts that they should be building more wind and solar instead. The fact is that coal power plants are there and can be turned on much more easily than the wind or solar buildout, whose output depends on the weather. For Europe, however, this is not an option, because most of the European Union members have shut their coal power plants down and cannot restart them. This puts Europe in quite a bind with regard to energy security, not least because demand for gas in its biggest outside supplier is also on the rise.<\/p>\n The United States is the world\u2019s largest producer and exporter of natural gas. Yet it is also one of the places with really fast-growing electricity demand because of Big Tech\u2019s bet on artificial intelligence. This bet is driving demand for natural gas as a source of reliable electricity generation and, ultimately, pushing gas prices higher\u2014including LNG export prices.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/book.jpg\"\/)
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