To make up for its dwindling supply of nuclear power, Japan is on a frenzied but costly hunt for fossil fuels.

As part of that hunt, tankers from as many as 12 countries are pulling up weekly to Japanese port cities, hauling liquefied natural gas supercooled to 162 degrees below zero. Officials from Tokyo are making trips to the Middle East, requesting increased shipments of oil. In the Timor Sea, off the coast of Australia, a Japanese firm has invested in a subsea natural gas pipeline that will eventually speed deliveries northward.

So far, Japan's drastic increase in fossil fuel imports, namely oil and liquefied natural gas, has kept the country from the short-term crisis of power outages and darkened cities, even as more of its nuclear plants go offline.