About 2,000 years ago, people in China made pipes from tall bamboo plants. They used them to drill wells and find natural gas hundreds of metres under the ground. The pipes carried the gas to their homes, where they used it for gas lights and heating water. Today we burn natural gas in factories and power stations. We also use it in homes for heating and cooking. There are even cars and buses which drive on natural gas instead of petrol. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel: it produces much less pollution than burning coal or oil. When a person in Britain cooks something, the natural gas that they use may come from Norway, Russia, or Kazakhstan. How do they get the gas from these places? Often the gas goes through pipes. One gas pipe under the sea from Norway to Britain is 1,200 kilometres long! In other places, the gas is cooled to make it into a liquid. This liquid gas is put in ships called gas tankers.