Methane clathrates, or hydrates, comprise frozen ice matrixes that have trapped methane and sit on the sea floor.

Around the world there are trillions of cubic feet of hydrates known to exist, but so far only Japan has had any success in recovering hydrates from the sea floor, and there have been some trials in Canada with mixed success.

Hydrate Resources was formed by Garth Johnson and Drew Cadenhead after the pair left Tag, a Canadian-backed junior that has typically focused on smaller shallow Taranaki Basin oil pools to tackle the big idea of recovering methane from beneath the sea floor.

Tag was just starting to branch out into drilling some deeper, higher risk but larger exploration targets and improving its understanding of unconventionals in the East Coast Basin when the oil price crash hit, and led to Tag cutting back its interests for lower risk opportunities, as many oilers have done in response.

Self-styled "disrupters from down under", Johnson and Cadenhead parted ways with Tag and decided to walk a higher risk path.

"Drew and I both came to our own decision to leave Tag for a variety of personal reasons and when we left Tag we decided to keep in touch and look at a few opportunities around the world, including some outside of the oil and gas industry," Johnson told Energy News.

"It was this review of opportunities that was the genesis of Hydrate Resources Corporation and we agreed that we would slowly and methodically build a plan to see if we can develop a successful venture using our combined strengths.

"We have always realised that the world needs energy from hydrocarbons and will need it for many years until renewables can step up to supply that energy sufficiently."

The pair say that if the world's massive hydrate resources can be safety unlocked it would help displace coal and provide a cleaner fuel until renewables can achieve their potential.

"Natural gas, although it is a fossil fuel, is the cleanest opportunity to bridge the gap between growing energy demands world-wide and the time it will take for renewables to meet that demand," he said.

HRC is very different to Tag, or conventional oil exploration, in that there is no drilling risk.

The work has been done and the hydrates are known to exist, so the risks are technological around extraction not from exploration.

The pair chose NZ because of their familiarity with the nation, its status as a mature energy exporter with a stable democracy and legal framework, a framework that includes legislation that will allow hydrate extraction anywhere within the exclusive economic zone.

HRC is still in its early days, and Johnson told Energy News it will take years of hard work to realise its goals and see the development of recovery technologies, but the pair has boundless optimism.

"We are excited by discussions happening around the world from government bodies, major oil and gas companies, well qualified and respected scientific research bodies and many others about the evolution of gas hydrates and the benefits hydrates can provide," he said.

"HRC wants to be a first-mover in providing the opportunity to meet energy demands of the future, in the cleanest possible way until renewables are ready to take the lead."

Right now the company doesn't even have any permits, but the pair believes the research has reached the point where we can safely explore for and test the productivity of hydrate deposits.

"HRC won't get to that point for a number of years but we plan to complete the due diligence, planning, research and data acquisition in the event we have the opportunity to begin exploration soon," he said.

HRC's plan is to follow a very methodical, long-term business plan. Right now it is working to fully understanding the science behind natural gas hydrates, the technology related to exploration and the benefits and challenges of natural gas hydrate exploration.

"It may be that if we do acquire an exploration permit that, after initial exploration efforts are completed, the drilling of a well may not be supported by the data acquired," Johnson said.

"If, however, we acquire an exploration permit and data acquisition supported the drilling of a well, it would be feasible to see hydrate exploratory drilling occurring between 5-7 years."

The response from speculators has so far been warm, and the company describes itself as "well-funded" and has meet 100% of its funding goals to date.

"Drew and I have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in capital for operations in the past and we are doing it again," Johnson said.

Japan is the only country in the world that has successfully produced deep sea hydrates in 2013, and has not attempted it again, or stated whether the production rates were commercial, but Johnson doesn't see that as discouraging.

"If you look at unconventional shale exploration in North America in the 90s it was thought that natural gas contained within these unconventional reservoirs would never be commercialised as it was thought not to be possible to flow these resources at commercial rates of production," Johnson said.

"Then in the next few years, due to a lot of hard work, ingenuity, investment and technology advancement, shale gas's success transformed the US energy market, accounting for nearly 50% of the electricity generated in the USA today."

Japanese researchers injected CO2 into the hydrates to coax them to the surface, but HRC is technology agnostic. It will look at any and all options when the time comes.

One of the concerns with methane hydrates is the risk of severe sea floor disruption, or at the more apocalyptic end of the spectrum, clathrate gun hypothesis, where increases in sea temperatures can trigger the sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and that, contained within seabed permafrost which, because the methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, leads to further temperature rise and further methane clathrate destabilisation - in effect initiates a runaway process as irreversible, once started, as the firing of a gun.

Johnson believes extracting hydrates could actually help stem any risk.

He said NASA recently concluded that the recovery of unstable hydrate sources of methane gas from the ocean and permafrost that can be converted to useful energy and will prevent subsequent release into the environment helping offset climate changes through anthropogenic or natural evolution of planet Earth.

HRC believes that there no risk of sea severe sea floor disruption is overstated, and is more likely to be naturally occurring.

"Exploratory drilling for hydrates involves drilling wells down into the strata below the sea floor, exactly the same as a conventional exploration well. The only difference is our final depth of wells will be considerably less than conventional exploration wells, likely no deeper than 500-600m," Johnson said.

"This means drilling can occur in a much simpler and less expensive manner than a conventional 4000m plus well that would require a jack-up or semi-submersible rig," he said.

"Drill ship based exploratory drilling can shorten the time frames compared to platform style drilling."