European natural gas prices hit their highest levels in nearly four years on Wednesday, and there are signs that prices won't be coming down anytime soon.

The Iran War has disrupted about 20% of global liquefied natural gas supplies at a perilous moment: Europe is heading into the high-demand winter season with its lowest level of natural gas in storage since 2009, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie. Natural gas is used for heating and electricity. If this winter is particularly cold, prices could rise much more.

That's a tailwind for American companies that produce and ship natural gas overseas in liquefied form known as LNG.

The biggest exporters include publicly traded names like Cheniere Energy, Venture Global and NextDecade. Rising prices also benefit Norwegian oil company Equinor, the largest producer of natural gas in Europe.

Investors can also play the trend by investing in U.S. producers like EQT and Range Resources, on the expectation that rising European prices will also lift prices here at home as demand for exports increases. So far, U.S. producers have lagged most other energy stocks because of an oversupply of U.S. natural gas. But some investors have already begun positioning themselves for when the LNG boom starts to impact U.S. prices.

The most direct way for U.S. investors to play rising European natural gas prices is through Venture Global, which owns LNG export terminals in Louisiana.

Venture Global has more exposure than its competitors to the spot market for LNG. The company sells most of its output through long-term contracts once its terminals are complete. But while they're under construction, the company sells the output from the partially built terminals on spot markets, reaping the rewards of high near-term prices.

That strategy has made its stock more volatile than top competitor Cheniere Energy over the past year, but it's given the company an advantage during high stress moments like Wednesday. Its stock is up 115% this year, versus 39% for Cheniere.

Another way to play high European prices is to buy shares of Shell, the leading natural gas player among the oil majors. Shell profits by buying LNG from export terminals at set prices and then selling it at market prices in the regions where it's in highest demand. Its stock has trailed its American peers and trades at just 10 times expected 2027 earnings, versus 15 times for Exxon Mobil.

Equinor offers some of the most direct exposure to the trend, but it has already risen 83% this year, better than almost all other large energy producers.

Another way to invest in growing natural gas demand is to buy U.S. producers. So far, there's been little evidence that rising prices overseas have lifted domestic prices.

The U.S. exports about 20% of total production, which hasn't been enough to move the needle because domestic production keeps growing.

But seaborne exports from the U.S. are set to approximately double between 2025 and 2030, and some investors expect production growth to plateau. Leigh Goehring, portfolio manager at Goehring & Rozencwajg Associates, said in an interview last month that he's bullish on U.S producers like Range Resources, Antero Resources, EQT, Comstock Resources and Expand Energy.