A Saskatchewan company is drilling for hydrogen and trying to prove it can be extracted from the ground at a commercial scale instead of being produced from fossil fuels.
Earlier this month, Regina-based Max Power Mining began drilling its third well at an underground rock formation called the Lawson Complex in southern Saskatchewan.
The company says it could become “the world’s first large-scale commercial natural hydrogen system” and the development of a new primary energy source.
Chad Levesque, the company’s president and director, said hydrogen is a “critical molecule” for making ammonia, refining petroleum in gasoline and diesel and migrating toward more decarbonized energy sources.
“But we need to figure out a more ecologically friendly way to source that molecule,” he said. “And that’s where natural occurring hydrogen really comes into play.”
But what exactly is natural hydrogen? Why would it be greener than other sources? And if this works, how big a deal is it?
Why do we need another source of hydrogen?
Hydrogen is a gas that can act as a combustible fuel or be fed into fuel cells to generate electricity. In both cases, it reacts with oxygen to generate water as its only byproduct.
It generates no greenhouse gases directly.
Because of that, it has been touted as a good energy source or fuel to cut emissions from hard-to-decarbonize sectors such as transportation and steelmaking.
It’s also an important chemical ingredient to make things such as ammonia and methanol and refining petroleum — what most hydrogen is currently used for, according the International Energy Agency’s 2026 Global Hydrogen Review.
“But we’re still using energy [intensive] processes to produce that molecule,” Levesque said.
Nearly all hydrogen available for sale (more than 80 per cent) is what’s known as grey hydrogen, which is produced from fossil fuels (mostly natural gas and coal) without reducing emissions through carbon capture. Because of that, hydrogen production generated 1,000 megatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2025 — more than the combined emissions of France and Indonesia, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reports.
Green hydrogen — which is produced using renewable energy and generates lower emissions — can be made from a process called electrolysis of water, which uses electricity to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen gas. It’s much more expensive and “far from being competitive” with grey hydrogen, the IEA says.
Green hydrogen has been labelled as one solution for Canada to meet its net zero goal by 2050. CBC’s Frances Willick finds out if green hydrogen is really better for the environment.
What’s the advantage of natural hydrogen?
In theory, natural hydrogen, also called white hydrogen, doesn’t need to be produced through an energy-intensive industrial process. It just needs to be released from underground deposits and captured, resulting in relatively low greenhouse gas emissions.
Levesque said at the Lawson Complex, that would involve the existing equipment, techniques and workforce used to extract natural gas and helium.
He thinks that will lead to “much more cost-effective pricing.”
However, those with some experience drilling for hydrogen warn it does take some special techniques and considerations compared with drilling for oil and gas.
Hydrogen is a unique element with some sensitivities, says Denis Brière, a vice-president of Calgary-based Chapman Hydrogen and Petroleum Engineering. The company will look for natural hydrogen in Ontario in the summer of 2024.
Where does natural hydrogen come from?
There are two main natural processes that produce hydrogen underground:
- The reaction of oxygen with iron-rich rocks under high underground temperatures, a process called serpentinization. Levesque said cylinders of rock drilled out from deep underground at Lawson show evidence of this process.
- The radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, which produces gamma particles that split underground water into hydrogen and oxygen “and acts almost like a natural electrolyzer,” Levesque said.
While these are known processes, Arnout Everts, a geoscientist and consultant currently based in Spain, said he thinks rich deposits of natural hydrogen will be a rare find.
“It’s so extremely volatile and reactive. Microbes love [to eat] it…. It leaks through virtually anything,” said Everts, who has worked on oil and gas and underground CO2 storage and now follows the development of natural hydrogen.
In 1987, workers in Mali accidentally set fire to a well where they were trying to drill for water. That later became the location of the world’s first and only developed natural hydrogen site.
Since then, other discoveries have led to a natural hydrogen gold rush around the world, including Canadian finds in Saskatchewan, northern Ontario and Quebec, and Nova Scotia, where Quebec Innovative Materials recently reported detecting its highest hydrogen concentrations so far at a site called Bennett Hill just 300 metres below the surface.
A company exploring white hydrogen in Cumberland County, N.S., was met with community pushback on Monday. But some see it as a much-needed economic opportunity. The CBC’s Luke Ettinger was in the Advocate Harbour area and toured the sites where work is happening.
Levesque said Saskatchewan has a unique geology that allows the hydrogen to accumulate in porous beds of sand from an ancient inland sea and seal it under layers of shale and salt.
What challenges remain for white hydrogen?
Everts said many confirmed hydrogen deposits so far may not be that easy to extract, as they’re dissolved in water.
While both the Mali well and Lawson are believed to be pockets of gas, Everts said the Mali deposit is “extremely shallow and the production rates are extremely small.” It produces about five out of the 100 million tonnes of hydrogen sold globally each year.
Max Power has not yet publicly estimated the amount of hydrogen available at Lawson. What it has confirmed is that it recorded natural hydrogen gas flowing to the surface after drilling its first well in December and took more than 800 metres of “continuous natural hydrogen readings” from its second well in July (both wells were drilled over two kilometres deep). It believes the Lawson Complex covers 28 square kilometres.
The company says its newest well will help with figuring out the exact location of the hydrogen, the amount and how easy it will be to extract. It says it will release data as it’s collected.
Everts said knowing how much hydrogen is available would be key to finding a customer to buy it. The company would also have to show it had good flow rates in order to produce the gas cheaply.
“It’s way too early to tell whether or not this is going to be something really attractive,” he said.
Projects in France and Nova Scotia are similarly at a very early stage.
Everts said so far, there’s no indication that there will be enough productive white hydrogen wells coming online globally to have a “meaningful impact” on decarbonization.
“In the meantime,” he said. “We just let the research continue and see where it leads us.”
