A CONSORTIUM of international geoscientists are today announcing their formal partnership to undertake new methods of exploration for natural hydrogen, following some breakthrough developments in exploration techniques.
Exploration businesses NHSG and Metatek have agreed to collaborate to advance science-based exploration for natural hydrogen and to offer a new approach to the challenge of identifying potentially commercial accumulations of hydrogen gas in the subsurface.
The NHSG/Metatek partnership provides a new exploration tool built on NHSG’s insights into, and modelling of, gas phase generation of hydrogen from ultramafic rocks in different geotectonic settings, alongside Metatek’s unique technologies and insights into subsurface imaging and modelling. It is the result of a series of joint studies undertaken since 2022.
The studies have revealed a clearer understanding than ever before of what constitutes a high potential hydrogen source rock, hence a series of integrated geological-geophysical workflows and proprietary technologies are now available to evaluate subsurface protoliths and identify exploration targets in different geotectonic settings.
The collaboration brings together NHSG’s international experience in oil & gas and minerals exploration, its extensive research and its proprietary Hy-Eval® tool for evaluating and quantifying hydrogen yield, with Metatek’s market leading technologies in geophysics and multiphysics.
The NHSG/Metatek partnership already has a global track record, for example a recent project in the United Arab Emirates for client RAK GAS that involved interpreting legacy data, field work and data sample collection and analysis.
Ian Hutchinson, NHSG’s Technical Director, comments: “This is a fantastic opportunity to partner with a world class geophysical company in the search for natural hydrogen, combining both parties’ unique IP and novel technologies into a powerful exploration tool. A classic case where the combined value of this collaboration will be far greater than the sum of the individual parts.”
Jonathan Watson, Metatek’s General Manager, adds: “We look forward to working alongside NHSG to drive this targeted and focused exploration approach and accelerate the race to find what is a very difficult to detect resource. By applying our advanced technologies and insights into subsurface imaging and modelling, we believe we can help bring about successful future drilling programmes.”
Natural Hydrogen Consultants Limited, trading as NHSG, is made up of experts in the fields of petroleum exploration, minerals exploration, petrophysics, geophysics and metamorphic geology. Building on expertise gained in the minerals and conventional oil & gas sectors, NHSG is investigating how well established, science-led exploration techniques can be applied to play-based screening and evaluation approach to locate natural hydrogen occurrences. Its research into natural hydrogen has been ongoing since late 2021.
UK-based Metatek is a worldwide leader in data acquisition, processing and interpretation services for air, land and sea geophysical / geological exploration activities.
Using technology such as airborne Full Tensor Gravity Gradiometry (FTG) instruments to create 3D imaging of the sub-surface for natural resource exploration, the company is the world’s only licensed operator of the latest generations of this industry-leading technology.
