Good progress in Japan. Read the whole story in the MIT Technology Review"For decades, researchers have been looking for ways to gather these crystals from their deep-ocean deposits and reap what they expect could be a natural gas harvest. Kanda and Nakajima are taking an opposite approach. Rather than extracting methane from hydrates, they want to turn methane into hydrates essentially, transforming the colorless and odorless gas into small pellets that can be easily stored, transported, and eventually turned back into natural gas."