There’s a real possibility that vast reserves of this clean fuel can be extracted at competitive costs
13 July 2023 • 6:59pm
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Every few years a disruptive technology comes out of left field and entirely changes the future of the global energy system, smashing into our consciousness like a thunderclap. It happened with shale fracking around 2009-2011, confounding OPEC, Russia, and an opinion establishment still hooked on the great red herring of peak oil. America went from an alarming energy deficit to become the top exporter of oil and gas within a decade. The dollar came roaring back. So did American power.
Today’s exuberant rush for “white” hydrogen has the same feel.
We are suddenly waking up to the very real possibility that vast reserves of natural hydrogen lie under our feet and can plausibly be extracted at costs that blow away the competition, ultimately undercutting methane on pure price.
A couple of cranks from Cornell Scientists have long argued that pockets of exploitable geological hydrogen are more abundant than hitherto supposed. The perpetual burning gas at Chimaera in Turkey – believed to be the source of the Olympic flame – has a hydrogen content reaching 11.3%
There is another such marvel at Los Fuegos Eternos in the Philippines.
It has been known since 2012 that hydrogen beneath the village of Bourakébougou in Mali has 98pc purity. The site was discovered in the 1980s when it blew up in the face of a local man smoking a cigarette while drilling for water.
Professor Alain Prinzhofer from the Institute of Physics in Paris found that the gas flow remained constant over time – the pressure even rose – confirming a hypothesis that hydrogen can keep renewing itself by a chemical reaction underground. What is new is that the world now needs that hydrogen and is acting on the insights.
The US Geological Survey concluded in April that there is probably enough accessible hydrogen in the earth’s subsurface to meet total global demand for “hundreds of years”. Viacheslav Zgonnik, a Ukrainian geologist, thinks white geologic hydrogen could be so cheap and abundant that it conquers the energy market.
“We think that we can reach $1 a kilo in the long-run and provide baseload power 24/7. It can be compressed for storage in steel tanks. It is not that expensive,” he said.
If so, that raises awkward questions about the eye-watering subsidies going into green variants (from electrolysis) and blue variants (natural gas with carbon capture).
BOW WOW , WOOF WOOF !
Are the EU, the UK, Japan, and others, barking up the wrong tree with their hydrogen strategies? …
In May, Française De l’Énergie and researchers from GeoRessources made Europe’s biggest discovery to date, finding 15pc hydrogen content at a depth of 1,100 metres.
“We never found much hydrogen before because we weren’t looking for it,” said Professor Jon Gluyas, a world expert on natural hydrogen at Durham University. Mass spectrometers and sensors were not set to detect it in normal drilling.
Hydrogen has a little understood and incalculable advantage over fossil fuels.
“The bore hole can theoretically produce for ever, just like geothermal. You don’t have to keep redrilling, and you don’t have the decline curve of oil and gas. That changes the economics of the project drastically,” Dr Zgonnik said.
“Nobody has yet made a commercial discovery ready for the market. As soon as one happens, there is going to be absolute frenzy,” he said.The next net zero billionaires might well be gas explorers drilling holes in the ground. The surprises never cease.
