In the meltdown that is the commodities market, natural gas has emerged as a bright spot, barely touched by the turmoil that’s contributed to a global slump.

Oil has tumbled 20 percent over the past three months on the Bloomberg Commodity Index, and gold is down 8.6 percent, helping send the gauge to a 13-year low this week. And U.S. natural gas? Up 6.1 percent. That’s because shipments are limited for now to North America, where hot weather has boosted demand for the power-plant fuel.

This all changes when exports, starting as soon as this year, take the gas market global. The fuel has been eating away at coal’s market share at U.S. power plants. Liquefied natural gas exports stand to shrink domestic supplies, giving coal a reprieve in the U.S. but thrusting the competition between the two fuels onto an international stage.

“North America has been a gas island while commodities like oil are traded worldwide,” said Charles Blanchard, an analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance in New York. “Exports of LNG from the U.S. will transform what’s been a very regional, balkanized market into a global marketplace.”

Rising Shipments

Coal producers are waiting for 2018, when sufficient LNG exports reduce domestic gas supplies, said Seth Schwartz, president and principal of Energy Ventures Analysis in Arlington, Virginia. The fuels’ roles will change in the seaborne market, Schwartz said. LNG prices will have to fall low enough to dislodge coal use at power plants.

“The competition that has taken place between coal and gas domestically will likely be exported, resulting in a more intense dogfight overseas,” Teri Viswanath, director of commodities strategy at BNP Paribas SA in New York, said July 22.

Europe will likely be the first battleground between gas and coal before spreading to Asia, according to the International Energy Agency. Globally, coal will dominate as the cheaper alternative to electrify emerging economies in India, China and Africa.

“Gas is increasing and gas is competing, but there’s still a lot of coal left,” said Carlos Fernandez Alvarez, senior coal analyst at the IEA in Paris. “When you think about the 8 billion tons of coal that we burn, this is not going to change tomorrow or the day after.”