In 1951, the Union Stockyard and Transit Company (Chicago) began building barges for transporting LNG. Initially, as an experiment, one river barge was converted into a methane carrier simply called The Methane. The barge was equipped with five tanks with a total capacity of 5,500 m3. Sheets made of cork wood were used as insulation material for the inner lining of these tanks. Interestingly, it was the high cost of cork (the lining thickness was 30 cm) that forced engineers to develop new types of insulation materials capable of maintaining low temperatures. Here you might ask, what is Union Stockyard? What kind of company is it and what does it have to do with natural gas in general and liquefied gas in particular?