Will this crystal give us bright future?

Will the search ship 'Chikyu'Chikyu, an about 56,700-ton deep-sea drilling vessel, bring hope from deep under the sea? We are waiting for the result of the prospective trial, drillng the hopeful crystal 'Methane hydrate'. The trial project has started at about 70km off the south east region around Atsumi Peninsula, Aichi prefecture.

People in Japan strongly hope that the icelike methane will become the "next generation" energy for Japan.

Methane hydrate was discovered only a few decades ago, and little research has been done on it until recently. By some estimates, the energy locked up in methane hydrate deposits is more than twice the global reserves of all conventional gas, oil, and coal deposits combined. But no one has yet figured out how to pull out the gas inexpensively, and no one knows how much is actually recoverable.

We hope that government and project team establish lauicelike methane as conventional energy.