The Exchanges

Q All right. Geologic hydrogen, what is it, and what makes it?

A So, look, I mean, everybody knows what hydrogen is, right? Hydrogen is this very, very common molecule, um, but it's, it's, it's highly reactive, and it's something that's actually hard to find by itself in nature. Um, the way geologic hydrogen is produced is essentially a, a Pretty simple reaction where water interacts with the iron in rock, and that water, the HT, the H two O in the water interacts with the iron and the ox, the oxygen goes to the iron side, oxidizes the iron up to a new oxide state, and that results in hydrogen being released. Um, and the hydrogen, this is a, this is a downhill reaction. It's an exothermic reaction, which means that it produces energy. So this is not a, you know, this isn't something that needs a bunch of catalysts to happen. It happens naturally. Um, So this is, and this has been happening in just massive, massive amounts since the beginning of time. Um, so that, that's, that's how geologic hydrogen forms.

AI assessment note: “the way geologic hydrogen is produced is essentially a, a Pretty simple reaction”

Q And there's not really been any, I think we're gonna get a little bit into sort of the debates about how much of it exists in the subsurface, and could it be a valuable resource, but also, like, what forms it? I mean, that basic thing that you just described, like, no one questions that, right?

A Yeah, yeah, that's a process called serpentinization, and, you know, it took me a lot of practice to be able to say that word consistently, but, but nobody questions that that's happening, and, and there are other forms of hydrogen formation underground. Hydrogen can form through radioactive Okay, or radiolysis, or even biological activity, but most people believe serpentinization is the main way that hydrogen forms under the ground, and, and look, we have hydrogen seeps have, that have been found and detected all over the planet. We have hydrogen seeping out of the ground in the mid-Atlantic rift in the ocean, and that comes to the surface at Iceland, and there's a lot of hydrogen coming out of the ground in Iceland, so, so nobody questions that this reaction is happening over and over in different places of the world.

AI assessment note: “nobody questions that that's happening, and, and there are other forms of hydrogen formation”

Q Let's talk about what makes that difficult specifically with hydrogen, right? Like, relative to oil and gas, one of the reasons why I think there has been historically some skepticism about the idea that there be significant reserves of hydrogen underground is, like, hydrogen, it should be harder, all things equal, for hydrogen to get trapped and sealed, right?

A Yeah, I, I think there's, there's two reasons why, uh, I would say there's three, there's really three reasons why this is challenging. One is, with oil and gas, You know, oil and gas come from basically buried organic matter, right? A bunch of trees and plants and bushes and grass and algae die, and then they're, they're, a bunch of sediments get laid on top of them, and over a long period of time with pressure and heat, that organic material decomposes into oil and gas, right? It's, but it's a single ingredient system, right? Just something that gets trapped. With hydrogen, it's a two ingredient system. There's two reactants. There's the rock and there's water. And so if water comes down or makes it into this rock to get it wet and form hydrogen, there's a chance that you, the same pathway that water followed into the rock is the pathway the hydrogen's gonna follow out, right? So that's, that's number one. It's a two, it's a two reaction, two reactant system versus a one. The second one is that hydrogen's a small molecule, right? It's not as small of a molecule as helium, but it's a very small molecule. It's, you know, it has Roughly 80% the viscosity of natural gas, but it's, it's considerably smaller as far as the actual size of the molecule, and that means that it can find its way out of cracks and crevices and things that natural gas or oil can't, and so you're, you're lo…

AI assessment note: “it can find its way out of cracks and crevices and things that natural gas”

Q it would mean if there is. Well, let's talk about what it would take. So talk me through, okay, obviously we know there's serpentinization going on all over the place. As you said, there are hydrogen seeps. Um, we know this hydrogen being formed underground. What would it take for then That to be a resource that we should talk about on a global scale as a source of energy?

A Essentially, in, in any sort of subsurface resource exploration, when, when you're talking about oil or gas, you know, oil or natural gas or helium, this, this is how you do it, and hydrogen, you know, it's really no different. You need a source, you need a viable source rock, and in this case, the source rock is basically water-wet Iron rock. Iron rich rock. So what's called mafic rock. Um, so you need a source rock, and then you need sort of a migratory pathway for the, the formed gas from that to move upwards or sometimes sideways or laterally into what's called a reservoir rock. And a lot of people when they, you know, I would say a lot of people when you say an oil reservoir or a gas reservoir, people think about like the, the reservoir they go boating on with their family or they see an, an, We're not talking about a lake of oil or a, or a, you know, a lake of gas, even though, you know, that's what people talk about in the movies. What a reservoir is, is a porous rock where the pores of the rock are full of a fluid other than water, right? So reservoir rock is porous rock. So you're looking for, you know, a source rock for hydrogen, a migratory pathway, and then porous rock where that hydrogen could then be trapped, um, under a tight seal rock and, and sort of held for ages. For a long period of time.

AI assessment note: “You need a source, you need a viable source rock... migratory pathway... reservoir rock”

Q production, be they fossil-based or not, is that we generally consider hydrogen to be an energy carrier. It's a secondary form of energy. This would not be that. This would be primary energy, and that's like a, that's a, such a fundamental distinction. It's, in fact, I think would be basically the first new significant source of primary energy that we found in the world in like a century, right?

A Yeah, since nuclear, right? Since, since we started working on nuclear technology in the, in the thirties and the forties. So, so just some, some numbers here, right? A ton of hydrogen, a metric ton of hydrogen has about 33 megawatt hours of energy in it. Now, you know, depending on what you do with it, some of that's lost in efficiencies, but just that's the number to think about is 33 megawatt hours. To electrolyze, to take renewable electricity and make a ton of hydrogen. Now that's totally green. You can do that carbon free. It's great in many ways, but you're going to put 50 to 55 megawatt hours of electricity into that system and pull out 33 megawatt hours. And so, best case scenario, you're, you're, you're about 60% energy efficient. Now, if you, if you step back and you say, okay, I'm going to make my hydrogen from natural gas, And, and, you know, people never talk about natural gas in terms of megawatt hours, but for the sake of comparison, I will. Roughly around 40 megawatt hours of thermal energy from natural gas would go into making, you know, 33 megawatt hours of hydrogen. So again, just confirming what you're talking about, you, you put more energy into that than you get out. And so hydrogen is really a form of energy storage. You know, you take one form of energy, you convert it to another, and you might be able to move it or this or that. Our best estimates for …

AI assessment note: “Yeah, since nuclear, right? Since, since we started working on nuclear technology”

Q oil and gas industry, which has, of course, been building all those things up over the course of centuries now to this new domain. I guess the question is how much of it does apply? Like, how much direct crossover is there Between the skills and technology and experience that has been built up in oil and gas exploration and production to what might get built up in geologic hydrogen?

A Yeah, it's, it's a really good question, and I, and I think, honestly, we, we can look backwards in time and figure out how many of, how many of the oil and gas tools and technologies applied to helium exploration, for example, because, because, you know, really what we're looking for is a different gas generation. In the subsurface. And the difference is that gas originates in different types of rock and might be found in different types of rocks for reservoirs and need different types of seals. But at the end of the day, you're exploring for a gas underground. So I think the technologies that come out of oil and gas and also mining, don't, don't forget about mining because it's the mining companies that actually know the most about this type of hard rock that serves as a source rock for hydrogen. But You know, a lot of those technologies, you know, from aerial surveys, you know, methodologies, looking at outcrops and figuring out what the geology underneath the ground is, you know, all the way through two D three D seismic, all that applies. You're looking at different rocks and different signals and have to interpret them differently. So there's a lot of sort of retrain, some skill sets that have to be developed as far as the knowledge base, but the actual tool set, it's not out of the box. But it definitely is sort of ready to, ready to help us move things as quickly as pos…

AI assessment note: “all the way through two D three D seismic, all that applies.”

Q Right? Like, you know, you have the petrochemical corridor in Texas or whatever. Let's assume that you can't just drill a well beneath Like, an existing ammonia plant, and, and all of a sudden you've got all your geologic hydrogen. So how do you think about, you know, this, this geography challenge with natural hydrogen?

A Well, look, I, I'd say that the first thing that, that really matters, and, and people have got to be clear with, right, it's like, it's not like every natural gas reservoir that's ever been drilled produces gas at the same low cost. You know, some reservoirs are drilled, and it's not a great reservoir, but it's It's just barely good enough to get it into the system. So some of the early geologic hydrogen finds that, that, you know, that come if this is really, if this is going to work, aren't necessarily going to be the best ones. And so we'll, we'll, we'll slowly kind of weed our way through the best ones. And then why this matters is if you can get your, your delivery costs down low enough, it becomes really attractive for people who want to produce, you know, the next wave of clean ammonia facilities, for example. Rather than, than them building in, you know, in a sort of pre-decided spot, they actually would be interested in coming and building close to the point of production for geologic hydrogen. Now, you know, think about, think about Houston in the 19 twenties, 19 thirties, as it, as it developed, right? Houston isn't there because everybody wanted to go down and settle this, this region in East Texas by itself. I mean, Houston was always a small town. The refining complex in Houston came about because that's where the first big oil finds were. And so then the refinin…

AI assessment note: “we tend to put infrastructure where the resource is first”

Q wait a second, do we have to just explore for these existing reservoirs, or what we're looking for is a reaction between water and iron-rich rock? Can't we just do it? We know there's 10% of the The world's, the Earth's crust is mafic rock. Can we stimulate hydrogen production in the subsurface? Talk to me a little bit about that side and what, what is and isn't known there.

A Yeah, so, so conceptually here, I mean, this is really fascinating, right, is that this reaction of water and iron, like, you, you can, you can, you can create this, right, you can create this artificially, you can push water into a iron-rich rock, and you can actually create this reaction. There's, you know, certain elements that, that will create, make this reaction go faster, you know, there's, there's certain, certain sort of Chemical and process conditions that'll make it go faster. You know, I'll give you an example, which is, and this is one that's not going to be a surprise to anybody who's a scientist listening, is temperature, right? Reactions tend to be governed by temperature to an exponential rate. So there's a, there's a, you know, the hotter you go, the fastest reaction's going to go. But if you go too hot, there will be other reactions that then subsequently happen that will actually reduce the hydrogen that's produced in this. So there's, there's kind of a Goldilocks temperature zone that you want to be in to make that happen. I think the other challenge with that is, is creating enough active surface area for the reaction to happen. Um, and, you know, this is different from, you know, stimulating a natural gas well or an oil well, because it's a totally different kind of rock, and you want to create this, this active surface area for the reaction to happen. I …

AI assessment note: “you can push water into a iron-rich rock, and you can actually create this reaction”

Q Now, of course, you have one potential advantage relative to oil and gas, which is that, as you said, oil and gas are formed over extremely long period of time because organic matter was buried very long ago. This water-rock interaction that you're describing with hydrogen Can occur continuously, right? At least in principle.

A Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it's a much faster reaction than, than what, you know, oil and gas, you know, oil and gas coming from decaying organic material. I, I, I think when you say faster, right, it's all relative, right? I mean, this is, this is fast like a snail and not like a, uh, you know, a tree. The, the, this is still, you know, our view is it's still, you're talking about thousands of years. Oil and gas, you're talking about millions of years, and this you might be talking about thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. There are sort of systems in the world where the temperature and the pH are just right, that it may be happening considerably faster than that. But for the most part, our view is if you're finding a reservoir full of hydrogen, it's not, it's not like recharging at a really fast rate, you know, with some exceptions.

AI assessment note: “it's a much faster reaction than, than what, you know, oil and gas”