South Australia has taken the lead in enabling exploration for natural hydrogen. In February 2021 amendments to the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Regulations 2013 declared hydrogen, hydrogen compounds and by-products regulated substances under the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act 2000. Companies are now able to apply to explore for natural hydrogen via a Petroleum Exploration Licence (PEL) and the transmission of hydrogen or hydrogen compounds is now permissible.
Since February 2021, seven companies have lodged 35 applications for PELs targeting natural hydrogen. The first of these, PEL 687 was granted to Gold Hydrogen Pty Ltd in July 2021 and the company is gearing up to commence field work. The second license (PEL 691) was granted to H2EX in June 2022.
As well as issuing exploration licences, the South Australian Department for Energy and Mining provides access to comprehensive geoscientific data submitted by mineral and petroleum explorers and departmental geoscientists since the State was founded in 1836. Access to old 1920s and 1930s reports indicating anomalous hydrogen contents in gas samples, together with modern geophysical and well data has underpinned the current interest in hydrogen exploration.
Why the interest? 50-80% hydrogen content was measured in 1931 by the Mines Department in gas samples from wells on Kangaroo Island, Yorke Peninsula and the Otway Basin, potential evidence that the natural formation of hydrogen has occurred. Iron-rich cratons and uranium-rich basement (also a target for geothermal energy explorers) occur in the Archaean-Mesoproterozoic Gawler Craton, Curnamona and Musgrave provinces which are in places fractured and seismically active with deep-seated faults. Sedimentary cover ranges from Neoproterozoic-Recent in age, with thick clastic, carbonate and coal measure successions in hydrocarbon prospective basins and, in places, occurrences of mafic intrusives and extrusives, iron stones, salt and anhydrite which could also be potential seals for natural hydrogen accumulations.