Pipeline Online: Hydrogen in SK Part 1
BY BRIAN ZINCHUK
www.pipelineonline.ca
Hydrogen in SK Part 1: How the quest for helium led to MAX Power drilling for Hydrogen
Editor’s note: As Saskatchewan sees yet another new resource being developed by the drill bit, Pipeline Online will be there to document it. As the ongoing Lithium in SK series now reaches Part 43, here is Part 1 of the new Hydrogen in SK series. As this new development progresses, Pipeline Online will be following it.
CENTRAL BUTTE, SK – About an hour’s drive northwest of Moose Jaw, in an area one would never expect to see a drilling rig, Stampede Drilling Rig 22 stood tall. And how it got there has everything to do with the race for yet one more new resource in Saskatchewan, found by looking for yet another resource.
MAX Power Mining Corp spudded its first hydrogen exploration well west of Central Butte on Sunday, Nov. 2. And how it got there, looking for the smallest, lightest molecule on the periodic table, is closely tied with a previous search for the second-smallest molecule – helium.
Two of the people working on the project, geologists Shayne Neigum, vice president of exploration for MAX Power, and Steve Halabura, chief geoscientist for MAX Power, were working on a helium project several years ago in southwest Saskatchewan. When they found helium near Climax, Saskatchewan, back in early 2021, they also found something else in the Deadwood formation – hydrogen. Natural hydrogen, sometimes referred to as “white hydrogen,” formed naturally underground and found in geological deposits.
But the helium rush of the early 2020s saw most of the land along the southern portion of the province scooped up for next to nothing – at prices of five cents per hectare. That’s a result of an outdated 1960s pricing structure that the province hadn’t got around to revise since. So for the price of a top-of-the-line one ton dually pickup (taxes included), it was possible to gobble up a few million hectares of land prospective for helium – and hydrogen. Several companies did.
So where does one go when they know there might be hydrogen, but much of the acreage has been scooped up for helium? You go just beyond that – to the north. And that’s why you could find a drilling rig working northwest of Moose Jaw, and not drilling for potash.
“It’s exciting. We’re here, drilling Canada’s first ever well for naturally-occurring hydrogen in the subsurface. We’ve got an exceptional rig and crew here, and we’re just excited to get deeper in the well and see what’s down there,” Neigum told Pipeline Online on Nov. 5.
Along the way, MAX Power has accumulated 521,000 hectares of exploration permits for hydrogen. At five cents per hectare, do the math. The cost was less than a decent used pickup, never mind a new one.
Asked about how helium led to hydrogen, Neigum pointed to “Our prior helium drilling campaign, not even realizing what we found, despite finding helium with the new craze of the clean energy wave and the big global craze on for naturally occurring, or ‘white hydrogen,’ as they call it.”
Hydrogen is considered by some to be the “fuel of the future.” The most common element in the universe, making up most of the mass of each star in the heavens, including our own sun. It is the fusion of hydrogen in the sun that allows life on earth.
Hydrogen economy
Its promise as a clean-burning fuel has politicians of all stripes talking about our new, impending “hydrogen economy.” When then-German Chancellor Olaf Schulz came to Canada to essentially beg for Canadian-produced liquefied natural gas (LNG), then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took him to Newfoundland to sign up on a complex scheme that would see on-shore wind turbines built on the southwest corner of the Rock, electrolyzing fresh water from a retired mine to produce “green hydrogen.” But since at the time there was only one ship on the planet capable of transporting large volumes of liquefied hydrogen (at only 20 degrees above absolute zero), that hydrogen would then be converted to anhydrous ammonia for shipping to Germany.
If that convoluted (and true) tale explains just a bit of the complexity and drive for new hydrogen, you’re getting a taste of the lengths some will go for hydrogen as a fuel source. That makes drilling a well on the wind-swept Canadian prairie relatively simple, in comparison.
Colours of the rainbow for a colourless gas
Even though hydrogen is actually a colourless and odourless gas, you’ll often hear it referred to by any number of colours. This is essentially a branding exercise to describe its source, but not its composition. A hydrogen molecule is a hydrogen molecule, despite what some might say. But the colour branding is a major part of the hydrogen play.
As mentioned above, geologically-sourced hydrogen is referred to as “white hydrogen.”
If you scale up classroom science experiments to zap water via electrolysis to get hydrogen and oxygen, that’s “green hydrogen.”
“Blue hydrogen” is made from natural gas (methane) using a process called steam reforming, but also creates carbon dioxide, which is generally frowned up unless it is captured and used in carbon capture and storage.
“Grey hydrogen” is essentially the same thing, but without capturing the CO2. And since it’s associated with the oil and gas industry, it’s the red-headed stepchild of the new hydrogen economy.
Coal and lignite gasification are “black and brown hydrogen.” If grey hydrogen is the red-headed stepchild, then these are the black sheep of the family, and not invited to dinner parties.
The colours go on to include pink, turquoise and yellow, all of which is explained here. Suffice it to say, white hydrogen, which MAX Power is drilling for, is likely quite high on the desirability index.
They found something
So when those former helium explorers found hydrogen when they were looking for helium, they were onto something.
Neigum said, “You roll back and you look at old data sets, and you go, well, son of a gun, we made the discovery already, you know? So we’re trying to replicate that now.”
MAX Power started trading on the CSE, OTC and FRA on Nov. 11, 2024. But its Listed Issue Financing Exemption (LIFE) Offering document published in July, 2025, indicates activity going back as far as 2021. It also discusses staking hydrogen claims in Northern Ontario, Quebec. Other properties are listed in the Quebec and Ontario. Most notably, there’s also a clay lithium play in Arizona. (more on that later).
As for Saskatchewan geology, Neigum said they’re looking at the Devonian through the Deadwood, “the typical helium-bearing horizons, plus there’s a basement complex component to this as well, which are the source rocks.”
Halabura explained by phone they had found 13 to 15 per cent hydrogen content when drilling for helium. As for just where this hydrogen may come from, he said, “Those source rocks are the basement complex.
“The current theories about hydrogen is it is generated through a process called serpentinization, where iron-bearing igneous rocks, in conjunction with water, break down to serpentine (a mineral), and in doing so, they give off hydrogen.
“There is also magnetite. If magnetite interacts with water, it breaks down to hematite, basically oxidizing the iron. That also gives off hydrogen.
“There’s also radiolysis, where radioactive minerals, such as feldspars, granites and thorium or uranium in those basement rocks breaks down water. So water is split into hydrogen and oxygen.
“The third way is primordial hydrogen seeping up through deep, deep crustal faults.” Halabura spoke of how the North American Craton was formed about 1.7 billion years ago from even older cratons, stitched together by younger rocks. The “Genesis Trend” they are pursuing follows a suture zone of that stitching process.
Any way you look at it, the previous helium drilling found hydrogen, and that’s what MAX Power is after.
Rights structures
Helium and hydrogen are under the same rights structure, Neigum explained.
Neigum said, “So helium and associated gasses permits, which are the type of permit we’re currently on for even drilling for hydrogen. That’s the current tenure layout. And so far, it doesn’t look like it’ll change and break out from hydrogen, because we feel that this will be a commingled gas stream, like we found that Climax a few years ago. And if there’s hydrogen, there will be helium, and if there’s helium, there may be hydrogen.
Asked if they’re looking for both helium and hydrogen, Neigum replied, “I don’t think shareholders, investors will be mad at us if we have a nice helium discovery here. As we all know, it’s price is on the rise.
“The focus is certainly hydrogen, but we’ll have all the detectors, and everybody will be watching closely for helium as well.”
As for going to an area that hasn’t had any helium development, he said there are, “Very few offsets here, you’re right. We’re in a heavily under explored area, you know, kind of northeast of the current helium fairway. That’s, you know, Battle Creek, Swift Current, Mankota; down in the southern part of the province.
“We’re pretty excited about what we see. This is this well, here, is one of six or eight test-a-concept-type plays for the occurrence of naturally-occurring hydrogen. And this play type is based on being right near the edge of the prairie evaporite. The salt barrier, we feel is, the ultimate trapping mechanism for gas molecules. So, yeah, this one of potentially six or eight wells that we’re going to test,” Neigum said.
Those wells will be widely spaced, from Central Butte to the US border to the south, and the Alberta border to the west. There’s a coring program involved, too. Core from that first well is now being looked at.
See www.pipelineonline.ca for the complete article