North Sea Gas Could Be the Next Source for Hydrogen

Hydrogen is becoming something of a darling in an energy sector looking to lower its carbon footprint.

Dec. 22 (UPI) — A team of U.S. and British companies said Thursday they were interested in using natural gas from the North Sea as a feedstock to produce hydrogen, something of a darling resource during the so-called energy transition.

U.S.-based Protuem Energy and Britain’s Transitus Energy entered into a letter of intent to search for opportunities in the British, Dutch, Irish and Norwegian waters of the North Sea to produce hydrogen.

Hydrogen production is described using a color spectrum. Most hydrogen production today is grey hydrogen, which breaks methane into its elemental components — carbon and hydrogen, with carbon as the byproduct.

Proteum and Transitus are pursuing blue hydrogen, which uses the same processes as grey hydrogen production but incorporates carbon capture and storage technology to reduce emissions of any harmful greenhouse gases.

“Blue hydrogen will accelerate the transition towards decarbonization of the energy sector,” said Bjorn Inge Tonnessen, the executive chairman at Transitus.

Energy companies are flocking to hydrogen as an alternate source of energy. GE Gas Power and Shell Global Solutions, an LNG entity within the company, signed an agreement last month to look for ways to cut the carbon intensity at Shell’s global LNG projects using blue hydrogen processes.

Hydrogen, however, might not be the catch-all resource for global decarbonization efforts.