Until about two weeks ago, the family had been living without heat or hot water, relying on electricheaters to keep warm and showering at friends' homes.
Dirk Bowman watches with pride as we walk along an assembly line, while workers tweak and twiddle with lines of cylindrical waterheaters at this General Electric plant in Louisville, Kentucky.
The authors suggest that a rapidly evolving technical to manage hydrates is to heat the pipes that carry the hydrocarbons to the surface, either through electricheaters or by circulating hot water around the outside of the pipe.