I am working on a subsea system to be deployed from a floating offshore drilling installation operating in deep/ultra deep water to harvest in a safe, reliable and continuous fashion to extract usable methane gas from formidably big known reserves. The engineering challenges are extensive but not considered insurmountable. A number of feasibility projects are underway and the Chinese last year conducted one offshore test (60 days) in the South China Sea but product was treated as if part of an extended drill stem test and burnt off via flare booms. All such projects to date are funded by government agencies with no financial commitment from any oil company.
You mean to harvest Class 4 hydrates (mounds etc?).
Actually I believe new technology should be developed for gas hydrate exploration studies. For example MeBo is submerssible unit. I find also weird to use Deep Sea Drilling Ships (whose rents ranging from 500,000 USD to 1,000,000 USD) because for gas hydrates you dont need to drill a well more than 750-1000 m sediments.