Scientists, researchers, and engineers have known for decades that there is an energy resource trapped inside ice and found under Arctic permafrost or beneath the ocean floor. Once thought to be rare in nature, newer estimates are that methane hydrates —popularly known as flammable ice or fire ice—are abundant in offshore waters of both resource-rich countries like the U.S., and resource-starving big energy importers like Japan. The current state of methane hydrates development around the world is in studies, resource assessment, and production tests. “ The most recent estimates of gas hydrate abundance suggest that they contain perhaps more organic carbon that all the world’s oil, gas, and coal combined,” the U.S. National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) says . Despite the fact that estimates suggest that the content of methane is “immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels ,” according to the U.S. […]