Natural Hydrogen Drilling Accelerates Across US, Canada, Australia

Across three continents, researchers and mining companies are racing to prove that hydrogen buried in rock formations could become a major energy source—one that requires mining rather than manufacturing. The shift reflects a growing skepticism about green hydrogen, the laboratory-produced fuel that was supposed to power the clean energy transition but has stumbled on cost and complexity.

The most concrete evidence emerged from Western Australia, where scientists at Edith Cowan University exposed magnetite samples—a mineral found in iron ore—to water at 200 degrees Celsius under high pressure for 60 days, mimicking conditions deep underground. They discovered that injecting a chemical solution into banded iron formations could stimulate hydrogen production. The Pilbara region of Western Australia contains some of the world's largest deposits of these banded iron formations, making the discovery potentially transformative if the process can be scaled from laboratory to mine. "If we can unlock this resource at scale, it could be transformative for our energy future," said Kaveh Moghanirahimi, the lead researcher.

The Australian work builds on findings from Canadian geochemists at the University of Toronto and University of Ottawa, who earlier this year mapped natural hydrogen concentrations in the Canadian Shield—some of the oldest rock on Earth—and tracked how the gas accumulates over time. Barbara Sherwood Lollar, the lead author, noted that hydrogen forms naturally through underground chemical reactions between rocks and groundwater. "Canada is blessed that vast amounts of its territories, especially on the Canadian Shield, contain the right rocks and minerals to create this natural hydrogen," she said. The research suggests that accessing this resource could provide a domestic source of cost-effective energy without the manufacturing overhead that has plagued green hydrogen projects.

The transition from research to drilling is already underway. In Canada, Max Power Mining has begun drilling a third validation well at the Lawson Complex in southern Saskatchewan, reaching depths of 2,278 meters. In the United States, the Australian-listed company HyTerra is production testing at its Nemaha Project in Kansas and conducting well testing at its Geneva Project in Nebraska. HyTerra's CEO Riley Kemp stated last month that "establishing a commercial geologic hydrogen project remains our clear focus" after results from the McCoy-1 well at Nemaha.

The U.S. Geological Survey published the first map of prospective geologic hydrogen locations in the country last year, identifying regions of potential interest spanning the mid-continent—Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Michigan—the Four Corners states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, the California coast, and areas along the Eastern seaboard. The breadth of the map suggests that natural hydrogen deposits may be far more widespread than previously understood.

The momentum around geologic hydrogen reflects frustration with green hydrogen's trajectory. Despite years of investment and optimism, green hydrogen production—which relies on electrolysis powered by renewable energy—has failed to achieve the scale and cost reductions promised. Major gaps have opened between planned projects and those actually built, with high production costs and difficulty securing long-term purchase agreements slowing deployment. Natural hydrogen offers a different path: if it can be extracted economically, it would bypass the energy-intensive manufacturing step entirely.

What remains uncertain is whether the laboratory results will translate into commercially viable mining operations. The Australian experiment demonstrated that hydrogen production depends not only on the presence of magnetite but also on how easily water can reach fresh mineral surfaces through fractures and permeable pathways—a condition that may vary widely across different geological sites. The companies now drilling validation wells are testing whether the conditions that work in controlled settings exist reliably enough underground to support ongoing extraction. If they do, a new industry could emerge within the next few years. If they don't, geologic hydrogen will remain a promising research direction rather than a solution to the energy transition's hydrogen gap.