The Race to Unlock the World’s Hidden Hydrogen Reserves
Iraq Wants to Double Oil Output—and Needs OPEC to Get Out of the Way Haley Zaremba is an energy journalist and researcher with more than a decade of professional experience covering global energy systems, land and natural resources, and… Countries around the globe are racing to become the world’s first geologic hydrogen hotspot.
A few years ago, the United States Department of Energy released a bombshell report that estimated that there are trillions of metric tons of natural hydrogen deposits sitting in underground pockets around the world – and that a considerable amount of that could be extracted for industrial use.
Energy companies around the world have been eagerly exploring for the most ideal locations to put that theory to the test – and they’re zeroing in on some promising potential goldmines.
Just this week, a newstudyout of China reported that scientists have measured record-breaking levels of hydrogen seepage in the Sichuan Basin, indicating that there could be enormous and easily tapped reserves below the surface of the Earth.
Samples taken from the area had hydrogen purity levels ranging between 97.33 percent and 98.24 percent, the highest ever recorded in China.
“This not only broke the record for natural hydrogen concentration in China but also became one of the few discoveries globally exceeding 98.00% purity,” the researchers reported.
Meanwhile,in the Philippines, private interests are starting to swarm around similar hydrogen seeps.
Billionaire-backed energy startup Koloma thinks that the Southeast Asian nation could likely be ground zero for what is destined to be a geologic hydrogen revolution.
“The Philippines has the largest natural hydrogen seeps anywhere on the planet,” Koloma CEO Pete Johnsonrecently told Forbes.
“We have reason to believe that these seeps are connected to very large accumulations.” The potential impact of commercially scalable geologic hydrogen operations is difficult to overstate.
Recent modelling estimates that underground natural hydrogen reserves could total approximately 5.6 x 106Mt (metric megatons).
“If the energy industry can extract just 2% of that total volume, it would yield twice the energy found in all proven global natural gas reserves,” Interesting Engineering underlined in arecent report.
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|---|---|---|
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