Old Technology Fuels New Energy Boom

With U.S. oil imports hitting a 17-year low, the mainstream media has awoken to the fact that, as I pointed out three years ago, peak oil is not happening anytime soon. Charles Mann's excellent cover story in this month's Atlantic, "What If We Never Run Out of Oil?" focuses on an obscure, exotic, though potentially vast source of energy: methane hydrates, or crystalline natural gas trapped below the seabed. If early exploration ventures by Japan, and other countries, succeed, this gas "could fre...