Fuel From Fire Ice

摘要

Global fuel supplies may soon fee dramatically enlarged thanks to new techniques to tap into huge reserves of natural gas trapped under the seafloor. In March, Japan became the first country to successfully extract methane from frozen undersea deposits called gas hydrates. These lacy structures of ice, found around the globe buried under permafrost and the oceanfloor, have pores filled with highly flammable gas. By some estimates, hydrates could store more than 10 quadrillion cubic feet of harvestable methane - enough to fulfill the present gas needs of the entire United States for the next 400 years.