The prospectors hunting hydrogen along a US continental rift
A gaggle of companies are searching the US Midwest for underground hydrogen fuel produced by a billion-year-old split in the continent – New Scientist visited one of the first to start drilling
By James Dinneen
16 June 2025
New Scientist visited a hydrogen well in Kansas
Hyterra/Adler Grey
The drilling rig rises several stories above a field normally full of grazing cattle. Though we’re in Kansas, the rig is flying both an American and an Australian flag to reflect its owner’s origin down under: HyTerra has come all the way from Australia in search of natural hydrogen fuel produced deep within an ancient fracture in North America.
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“Behind us is the Midcontinent rift, which we think is the kitchen where the hydrogen gets made,” says Avon McIntyre, the company’s executive director. The rift has drawn many companies to the US Midwest, making eastern Kansas one of the busiest frontiers in a worldwide search for “geologic hydrogen”, which many hope could serve as a zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.
The story starts around 1.3 billion years ago, when the continental plate that is now North America began to split in two. Although the continent eventually stopped spreading, the fracture left behind a 2000-kilometre-long scar of iron-rich mantle rock. Today, this rift is buried deep beneath the farms and ranches of the US Midwest.
In eastern Kansas, where the solid rock around the rift rises relatively near the surface, high concentrations of hydrogen have been measured in old oil and gas wells. To see if it can be harvested, a handful of companies have leased hydrogen drilling rights on more than 100,000 hectares of land in the area. That’s according to McIntyre’s estimates, which are based on public courthouse filings. HyTerra and its competitor Koloma have gone further, beginning to actually drill deep underground.
“It is kind of like the gold rush, where everybody is trying to find it,” says Kristen Delano at Colorado-based Koloma. She would not say where the company is drilling in Kansas, but says it is public knowledge they have drilled there. Other companies, such as another Australian firm called Top End Energy, have been buying up mineral rights based solely on where Koloma is thought to be buying.
