Japan imports over 90% of oil and fuel from abroad. Now they found this vast deposit but what is the environmental impact? Japan is celebrating a groundbreaking science experiment in the Arctic permafrost that may eventually reshape the country's fragile economy and Tokyo's relationships with the outside world. For an unprecedented six straight days, a state-backed drilling company has managed to extract industrial quantities of natural gas from underground sources of methane hydrate - a form of gas-rich ice once thought to exist only on the moons of Saturn. In fact, the seabeds around the Japanese coast turn out to conceal massive deposits of the elusive sorbet-like compound in their depths, and a country that has long assumed it had virtually no fossil fuels could now be sitting on energy reserves containing 100 years' fuel. Critically for Japan, which imports 99.7 per cent of the oil, gas and coal needed to run its vast economy, the lumps of energy-filled ice offer the tantalising promise of a little energy independence. Japan's Arctic methane hydrate haul raises environment fears - Times Online
I'll read the article when I get home but methane hydrate (or clathrates) only found on the moons of Saturn? Where have these people been over the last century of ocean exploration? Methan hydrates can be found off nearly every continental shelf in the world (slight exageration). LOL
If we can capture the methane escaping from the melting permafrost, that could help keep it out of the atmosphere. Well, at least until we burn it.
The Straight Dope: Are there deposits of methane under the sea? Will global warming release the methane to the atmosphere"
