Gold Hydrogen (ASX: GHY) shares are up 54% today. This on the basis that they’ve found some hydrogen (and some helium) by drilling for it. This is lovely for Gold Hydrogen of course, they’ve found the element they were looking for. But this also has much larger implications for the economy more generally. And contrary to what is normally true in the natural resources sector the more people who find more of it the more each particular well is likely to be worth. The one well that contains hydrogen will be an interesting peculiarity. Many wells producing much hydrogen will be the basis for a new industrial sector.
The specific news today: “Significant concentrations of hydrogen and helium have been encountered in sections of the Ramsay 1 well, confirming historic measurement and demonstrating an active hydrogen system in the Ramsay Project area. Testing and laboratory results measured air-corrected hydrogen at 73.3% at 240m below ground level, consistent with the 76% air-corrected concentration of hydrogen reported in the Ramsay Oil Bore 1 in 1931. These measurements validate historical results, and confirm the presence of a hydrogen play at shallow depths in the Ramsay Project area.”
The importance of this is as we’ve said before about Gold Hydrogen: “Gold Hydrogen (ASX: GHY) (OTCPK: GHYLF) shares are up 38% today. GHY shares have risen on no specific and detailed corporate news but there is a swell of interest in the general sector Gold is working in. The idea of “white” hydrogen is the latest of the cure alls for climate change. This is something which really would be a cure too, if it actually works. But we're still rather at the theory stage when trying to work out whether it will, in fact, actually work. This means that changes in sentiment will have significant implications for the share prices of those involved in the enterprise.”
The background here. There are a number of industrial processes that use hydrogen, most of which is created by extraction from fossil fuels. That means carbon emissions. Finding some H2 in its natural state would reduce emissions there. But more than that, there’s a possibility of using hydrogen as the input for many more such processes. Even, for making petrol and perhaps more importantly, jet fuel. We know how to do this, it’s getting the hydrogen that’s the problem.
There has been an idea floating around that there are underground processes which create hydrogen. Naturally that is, consistently and over time. We really do not think that any of the Earth’s original endowment is still floating around in elemental form, it’s all either water or gone off into space. The existence of natural hydrogen has been hypothesised, sometimes called geologic hydrogen. Also gold, or white, hydrogen and there’s something of an exploration race for it.
There’s a use for it in extant industry. But the more of it that is found the more it becomes an answer to more different climate change problems. That is, the more that’s found the more each part of it becomes worth.
Gold Hydrogen might have just found the one interesting reservoir. But they might also have proven that hypothesis to the benefit of the much wider society.
