What happened in the UK over the weekend is reminiscent of the 1970s, when long queues formed in front of thousands of gas stations because of a shortage of truck drivers and drivers worried about fuel shortages. But the panic at the gas station was really just an episode. Due to natural gas shortages, natural gas prices in Europe and around the world have soared, causing household spending to increase and suppliers unable to cope with demand.

On the other hand, due to the limited power supply caused by energy shortage, many factories, including Apple Inc and Tesla, Inc. suppliers, have stopped production. Both Yisheng Precision Engineering and Xinxing Electronics, a subsidiary of Apple Inc's parts supplier Foxconn, said the shutdown would last until Thursday.

Meanwhile, oil prices and energy stocks rose on Monday. The November contract rose 1.95% to $75.42 per barrel, while the December contract rose 1.7 per cent to $78.54 per barrel. Us natural gas contracts rose as much as 12.6 per cent to $5.857 per million British heat in November, the highest since 2010.

Goldman Sachs Group (Goldman Sachs) raised his year-end Brent crude price forecast to $90 from $80 a barrel and WTI crude to $87. Most notably, analysts at the bank said Hurricane Ida, which hit oil production infrastructure, should be "the most favorable oil bullish hurricane in US history".

Goldman Sachs Group said that the mismatch between global demand and supply was greater than the bank expected, and demand recovered faster than expected after the impact of Delta coronavirus mutation. Coupled with global gas shortages, winter oil demand is clearly on the upside, they say.

Exxon Mobil Corp, the oil and gas producer, rose 3 per cent on Monday, while Occidental Petroleum rose 7.4 per cent.

The soaring price of natural gas may hit the EU's environmental protection cause.

Experts say the EU may struggle to advance its green agenda as natural gas prices soar across Europe. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050 and has come up with a specific plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cent from 1990 levels by the end of the century.

However, these ambitions are likely to take a hit as gas shortages in Africa push up prices. The price of natural gas in TTF, the European benchmark, has risen by more than 250% in recent months since the start of the year. On Tuesday, natural gas prices were about 74 euros ($87) per megawatt hour, slightly below the all-time high of 79 euros set last week.

The recent surge in prices has had a real impact. Spain, for example, has announced emergency measures to limit the profits energy companies can make from alternatives to natural gas, including renewable energy, and the government wants to limit the electricity bills consumers pay.

Spain is not the only country to limit the rise in energy prices. France and Greece have taken similar measures. But the plan has met with some criticism in Spain.

Iberdrola, a Spanish energy company specialising in renewable energy, said the move "will undermine investor confidence in Spain" at a time when Spain needs private money to implement its climate planning.

"if you see EU rich countries subsidizing some of the household energy supplied by fossil fuels, it would be difficult for the EU to ask poorer countries to stop subsidizing household energy using fossil fuels," Gloestan told the CNBC by email. "

Meanwhile, Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Foundation (German Marshall Fund), a US think-tank, said he was not overly worried at the moment, but that the ongoing energy crisis "made it all the more important for the Spanish government to find other sources of financing".