Both Japan and China announced in May 2017 a breakthrough for mining methane clathrates, when they extracted methane from hydrates in the South China Sea. China described the result as a breakthrough; Praveen Linga from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore agreed "Compared with the results we have seen from Japanese research, the Chinese scientists have managed to extract much more gas in their efforts". Industry consensus is that commercial-scale production remains years away.