Japan is actually working on this. There is a massive deposit of methane hydrate within their territorial waters.
One problem is safely mining the hydrate without dislodging huge chunks of it. As in ENORMOUS chunks. There are other problems. But if the problems can be cracked, there are quadrillion of cubic feet of natural gas available from this source. Actual, hundreds of quadrillions of cubic feet.
PS Yes, really, as in about 300,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet of know reserves.
So what risks would a methane hydrate-berg pose? Would it proceed to blanket huge areas with gaseous methane near the ground/sea surface?
We are working on this problem of mining Methane Hydrates with Japan. The Maconda well blow out may have given us some answers as the main problem with MH is the very high pressures involved.
We have about a quarter of the world’s supply on our continental shelf. The supply that we have is vast. Hundreds or thousand of years worth of energy.
We just need to figure out how to get it to shore.