Global natural gas demand will likely surge over the next five years, largely due to a more than doubling of consumption in China even as a boom in unconventional production continues unabated in the U.S., turning the country into an exporter of liquefied natural gas by 2017, the International Energy Agency said Tuesday.

By 2017, global gas demand could grow by around 580 billion cubic meters--nearly equal to the entire current annual production of Russia , the world's biggest gas producer, the IEA said in a report.

The IEA last year predicted the onset of a "golden age of gas" due to an abundance of cheap supply and rising demand from China and Japan , where demand was surging in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

U.S. production has been surging over the past several years thanks to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which has enabled companies to extract natural gas trapped in shale rock formations. Despite record-low prices, the revolution will "continue in full swing" and may even end coal's hundred-year dominance in U.S. power generation, the IEA said.

Environmental opposition and a lack of infrastructure will limit shale gas production outside the U.S. even as unconventional gas reserves rise across the globe, it said, adding that only China and Poland are likely to start shale gas production on a commercial scale by 2017.

The most fundamental shift in the global gas market will happen when the U.S. exports its first cargoes of liquefied natural gas, which is expected by 2016 or 2017, the IEA said. Such a scenario was unthinkable not so long ago, when the U.S. was deemed to be a guaranteed market for LNG with new capacity being planned, particularly in Qatar and Australia .

The shale gas revolution has coincided with a huge expansion of the global LNG trade that has vastly increased the availability of a fuel that for decades could only be pumped through pipelines.

The volume of LNG traded globally increased by almost 10% in 2011, with the bulk of additional supplies going to hungry Asian markets, especially Japan .

China is expected to remain the fastest-growing natural gas market, with annual consumption forecast to more than double to 273 billion cubic meters in 2017, the IEA said.

Adding to rising demand, several Southeast Asian countries will become LNG importers over the next five years, including current exporters such as Malaysia and Indonesia , it said.

Despite the increase in global trade of natural gas, expectations of an interconnected global gas market haven't been realized, and most markets remain dependent on regional pipeline supplies, the IEA said.

"The prospect of a global gas price not only did not materialize, but also looks increasingly less plausible," the IEA said.

The global LNG trade is expected to slow considerably in the next three years before abruptly accelerating again in 2015 once Australian and then U.S. exports come onto the market, it said.

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