Natural Hydrogen Development-Potential and Challenges

Arnout Everts, Jos Bonnie, Ramon Loosveld

Natural hydrogen has recently been identified as a potential source for future energy systems. This paper investigates the technical development potential of natural hydrogen by estimating, for some recent finds and identified prospects, in-place and recoverable hydrogen, well productivity, water production and other byproducts that a future development would have to cater for.

Finds are in three broad play types:
1) focused-seepage plays where predominantly aqueous hydrogen migrates with minimal trapping;
2) coalbed plays where hydrogen is adsorbed molecularly in coals;
3) reservoir-trap-seal plays with gaseous hydrogen trapped underneath an impermeable seal.

Focused-seepage plays have a low to modest hydrogen resource-density, low well-productivity and developments may co-produce large volumes of water. Coalbed hydrogen plays may have higher resource density but again, low well-productivity. Only developments of reservoir-trap-seal plays could potentially achieve industrial offtake but to date no accumulations of this type have unambiguously been discovered.