- Mali discovers vast reservoirs of clean hydrogen gas.
- Petroma had installed a pilot unit to turn the gas into electricity that produced water as an exhaust product and transformed the village into one with reliable, plentiful electricity.
In Mali, a beautiful West African country, a huge discovery has a town drawing a flammable gas from the earth that produces loads of electricity without CO2 emissions. The town called Bourakébougou was prospected by Malian energy entrepreneur Aliou Diallo, who believed the mysterious gas, which in the daytime shone with a blue colour like sparkling ocean water, and at night like golden dust, could represent a fortune. In 2012, he recruited Chapman Petroleum to determine what the gas was. It was 98% hydrogen. Months later, Diallo’s firm Petroma had installed a pilot unit to turn the gas into electricity that produced water as an exhaust product and transformed the village into one with reliable, plentiful electricity.
In 2018, a science team published a paper on the Bourakébougou hydrogen well, which concluded from evidence obtained from a dozen exploratory wells in the vicinity that it was “possible to confirm the presence of an extensive hydrogen field featuring at least five stacked reservoir intervals containing significant hydrogen that cover an estimated area well superior to 8 km in diameter.”
Furthermore, the study found that the current estimate of its exploitation price is much cheaper than manufactured hydrogen, either from fossil fuels or electrolysis.
Hydrogen fuel has enormous potential to transition off fossil fuels as it’s the best currently perceived alternative for diesel or kerosene-based transport such as semi-trucks, jet aircraft, and cargo ships. Now, the Malian wells can produce hydrogen gas at 50 cents per kilo, one-tenth of the cost of hydrogen created through electrolysis with solar, wind, geothermal, or other green energies. Ian Munro, CEO of Helios Aragon, a startup pursuing hydrogen in the foothills of the Spanish Pyrenees, told Science his break-even costs might end up between 50 and 70 cents, adding that would revolutionize energy production.
As for Diallo, he started a new company called Hydroma, which now produces electricity for the area via the hydrogen reservoir and is looking into using it to create green hydrogen via electrolysis.