The U.S. is the world’s biggest producer of both crude oil and natural gas. One fuels our cars and airplanes. The other heats and cools our homes. But the outlook for these two commodities is heading in different directions.

The U.S. has gotten great at fracking oil — in fact, the world is producing more oil than it needs.

“There's a big debate out there in oil circles on whether or not the U.S. is about to start declining in oil production,” said Garrett Golding, an assistant vice president for energy programs at the Dallas Federal Reserve.

“When you look at rig counts, when you look at the amount of frack crews that are out there in the shale basins, when you look at oil prices, it all points at the U.S. starting to plateau,” he said.

But as crude oil fundamentals are weakening, a totally different story is playing out for U.S. natural gas, which is finding new markets in Europe and Asia, said RBN Energy CEO David Braziel. 

“The last two months have been absolutely wild in terms of big new natural gas demand centers from LNG making final investment decisions,” he said.

But here’s where the rubber meets the road: While demand for natural gas continues to grow, “at the same time you're seeing lower natural gas production, because crude oil is anticipated to drop with right with dropping rig counts,” Braziel said.

Natural gas is produced as a byproduct of crude oil drilling, especially in the Permian Basin. You go in for the oil and a certain amount of gas comes up. It’s called “associated gas.”

“So as we move forward, though, and we get to this next tranche of LNG plants, it becomes interesting,” said Raoul LeBlanc at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “If oil growth is slow or non existent … you will lose the massive growth that you were getting from associated gas.”

Which could mean amping up production of natural gas in other places beside the Permian. But it also has to be close enough to the Gulf Coast, because that’s where LNG export terminals are being built. 

That means places like the Haynesville Shale, a natural gas producing area in East Texas and Louisiana. “But we don't think it can do the job by itself,” LeBlanc said.

He said we could see natural gas prices spike enough that we may even see companies developing brand new natural gas resources, too.