The United States alone is littered with up to three million abandoned oil and gas wells. Many of these wells still contain oil or natural gas, but their owners decided it was no longer worth the cost to keep pumping. As Prab Sekhon, CEO of Eclipse Energy, explained, operators have tried everything, yet a significant amount of oil remains trapped underground.
Eclipse has developed a novel approach to extract energy from these dormant sites, though not by recovering the oil itself. Instead of pumping harder or injecting substances to force oil to the surface, the company sends specially selected microbes down into the wells. These microbes consume the oil molecules and release hydrogen gas as a byproduct.
This process transforms the challenge of extracting viscous oil into the simpler task of capturing hydrogen gas, which flows much more easily to the surface. The Houston-based startup, which originated from Cemvita and was formerly known as Gold H2, successfully demonstrated this technology last summer at an oilfield in California’s San Joaquin Basin.
Now, Eclipse is partnering with the oilfield services company Weatherford International to deploy the technology globally. The first projects are set to begin in January. Sekhon described Weatherford as an extension of the Eclipse team, serving as their operational arm for these deployments.
The technology has been developed over several years. Eclipse has been sampling microbes that naturally occur at the interface between oil and water in these wells, identifying the strains most effective at breaking down the oil. As the microbes consume the oil, they produce a mixture of hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
Both gases flow to the surface, where they can be separated. It is estimated that about half of the carbon dioxide will remain trapped in the underground reservoir. The other half can be captured using specialized equipment and either sequestered or utilized.
Eclipse’s goal is to produce low-carbon hydrogen for approximately fifty cents per kilogram. This would match the cost of hydrogen produced from natural gas through conventional methods, which release far more carbon dioxide. The resulting hydrogen could then be used in petrochemical plants or burned for energy. In Sekhon’s words, this innovative process takes a liability and turns it into a clean energy asset.