" In February 1959, the Journal of Commerce, in a story headlined “Cargo Ship with Methane on High Seas,” announced that a converted World War II freighter, renamed the Methane Pioneer, had set sail from Louisiana for England. It carried a cargo that had never before been shipped over the seas—liquefied natural gas—LNG. Liquefied natural gas is the product of a complex process that refrigerates natural gas to extreme cold, down to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, thus compressing it into a liquid. Since in its liquid form the gas takes up only one six-hundredth of the space that it would in its gaseous state, it can be pumped into tanks on refrigerated ships and transported across oceans and then “regasified”—turned back into gas—at the other end and pumped into a pipeline system in the receiving country. "

― Daniel Yergin , The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations