Brian Zinchuk is editor and owner of Pipeline Online
Northwest of Moose Jaw is not exactly where you’d expect to see a drilling rig (that’s not drilling for potash). Stampede Drilling Rig 22 was there in early November. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
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.
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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 That’s a result of an outdated 1960s pricing structure that the province hadn’t got around to revise since.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.
This was the first targetted hydrogen well in Canada, drilled west of Central Butte. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
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.
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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.
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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.
Drilling for hydrogen in November, 2025. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
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.
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“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.
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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.
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“We’ve got land spread out everywhere. And we’ve cherrypicked some nice helium lens out of lapsed to do the inactivity.
“There’s been several (helium) players that never did really do anything with the big, gargantuan land packages they had.
“One thing I’m most proud of, a colleague, Steve Halabura, just a brilliant geologist, is we’re doers. We were doers in the helium space, and we’re certainly doers, and you know, with this Lawson drill turning here, we’ve just entered the kind of the small, elite status group of guys out there drilling for hydrogen. And to be part of the first in the country is pretty cool.”
Stampede Drilling Rig 22, drilling Canada’s first targetted hydrogen well.
Lawson site
They refer to the location as the “Lawson drill site.”
The company’s website explains, “MAX Power will be carrying out Canada’s first-ever dedicated natural hydrogen deep drilling program beginning this quarter (Q4 2025) with a robust “test of concept” well on the 200-km-long Genesis Trend in southern Saskatchewan. The “Lawson” target has all the elements necessary for a natural hydrogen accumulation (source rocks, migration pathways, reservoirs, seals and traps), plus 4-way closure. Genesis, just one of several MAX Power land packages in Saskatchewan, has an abundance of early-stage prospects which can be quickly advanced following completion of this initial well.”
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MAX Power’s first well was successfully cased in November, and reached a depth of 2,278 metres. On Dec. 2, the company brought a service rig onto its first well.
A second well near Bracken, Saskatchewan is in the works. Notably, Bracken is just a few miles east of where that aforementioned helium well was drilled in 2021. The Bracken site, near the Montana border, is 325 kilometres to the south of the Central Butte site. MAX Power noted in a release the second well is “fully funded,” and “part of a broader multi-well program across Canada’s largest permitted land package (1.3 million acres) for natural hydrogen exploration and development.”
The company said, “The testing program involves the perforation of casing through particular zones of interest, after which samples of gas and liquids will be captured for detailed chemical analysis. During the sample collection period, pressures will also be recorded using both downhole and at surface pressure recorders. Once samples are collected and pressure data recorded, the perforated zones will be isolated one from another with bridge plugs, thus securing the well until further work is required.”
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Market
If they do end up producing hydrogen, where will it go and what will it be used for? The company’s web page talks of nearby industries that could provide a local market.
“Notably, Genesis is located adjacent to the Regina-Moose Jaw Industrial Corridor (RMJIC), Saskatchewan’s first proposed Hydrogen Hub, where there is valuable infrastructure including a hydrogen refinery. The RMJIC is home to major industry including fertilizer producers and some of the province’s largest consumers of natural gas. This locality reduces risk by offering diverse routes to market including blending into the gas grid to decarbonize industrial heat, or as an industrial feedstock.”
Workshop
On Nov. 10-11 MAX Power and the Petroleum Technology Research Centre held a two day session first at the University of Regina and then on-site on Nov. 11. A Nov. 10 press release said, “Scheduled to participate in the working session, led by MAX Power Chief Geoscientist Steve Halabura, are researchers from PTRC, U of R, as well as researchers from the Saskatchewan Geological Survey and the Colorado School of Mines, including Dr. Yaoguo Li. The purpose of the session is two-fold: 1) Confirm the current state of knowledge concerning the naturally occurring hydrogen system in Saskatchewan; and (2) Investigate possible fields of research to jointly advance knowledge concerning not only natural hydrogen in Saskatchewan, but also natural hydrogen systems worldwide. Included in the working session will be a visit to the Lawson drill site.”
New CEO for MAX Power
And on the subject of the PTRC, its president and CEO, Ranjith (Ran) Narayanasamy, in recent days announced he was leaving the PTRC to become the new CEO of MAX Power Mining Corp.
Originally Narayanasamy was supposed to take over the reins on Dec. 8, but that was accelerated to Dec. 1, according to a Dec. 1 press release.
Ranjith Narayanasamy in his former capacity as CEO of the Petroleum Technology Research Centre. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
The company said in an Oct. 30 press release, “Mr. Narayanasamy has all the experience and credentials to guide MAX Power through the natural hydrogen discovery phase to commercial development. He brought transformational leadership to PTRC, establishing the province’s first Energy Innovation Hub to focus on producing more energy with lower emissions. He will leave PTRC stronger and more financially secure. In his prior senior role at SaskPower, he excelled in multiple areas including transmission & distribution, project management, Indigenous procurement strategies, hydroelectric development, supply chain, international carbon capture & storage (CCS) mobilization, business transformation and cross‑functional operations, finance, and cyber‑security. He is also recognized for significant board and community roles across the province, and he’s a sought-after public speaker on clean energy issues.”
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“For investors, this transition marks a major inflection point. Already armed with a powerful technical team for cutting-edge natural hydrogen exploration, MAX Power with Mr. Narayanasamy as CEO will strategically position itself for a post-discovery development and commercialization phase in the natural hydrogen sector – an emerging industry with the potential to reshape clean energy markets globally. The proposed spinout or strategic transaction of the company’s U.S. subsidiary further enhances shareholder value by unlocking Willcox Lithium’s stand-alone potential in a supportive policy environment while allowing MAX Power to stay laser-focused on baseload, zero-emission natural hydrogen development.”
Narayanasamy, said in the same release, “Saskatchewan’s overall resource endowment is extraordinary, and the province is ready to lead the world in natural hydrogen. Saskatchewan is ranked by the Fraser Institute as the most attractive jurisdiction for mining investment in Canada and it’s #7 globally. Over the past year-and-a-half I have watched MAX Power assemble the largest permitted natural hydrogen land position in Canada, overseen by a disciplined, data‑driven technical team with the right approach and supported by an accomplished Board. My mandate is simple: convert an impressive technical edge into repeatable discovery and commercialization, and further build shareholder value while maintaining MAX Power’s commitment to safety, Indigenous economic participation, and capital discipline. By 2050 the global population will exceed 9 billion people – the world needs sustainable, low-emission energy sources and that’s the niche for natural hydrogen. I am honoured to join this team at such a pivotal moment.”
Mansoor Jan, current CEO and incoming CEO of MAX Power’s U.S. critical minerals subsidiary, said, “Ran is the right leader at exactly the right time. His Saskatchewan credentials, clean energy track record and boardroom gravitas will accelerate MAX Power’s natural hydrogen strategy for this exciting new phase. It has been an honor for me to help build the MAX Power team that is ready to make history in Canada’s clean energy space by launching the country’s first dedicated natural hydrogen multi-well drill program. I’m thrilled at the prospect of continuing to help build shareholder value for MAX Power by advancing our Arizona critical minerals asset through our U.S. subsidiary and monetizing that opportunity.”
And now lithium, too
To that end, the company said, “MAX Power’s Board has approved the appointment of current CEO Mansoor Jan, who has guided the company’s transition over the past year, as CEO of MAX Power’s American subsidiary as the company advances plans for a potential spinout or other strategic transaction aimed at realizing value from its Willcox Playa Lithium Project in southeast Arizona. This initiative is intended to unlock the value of the asset for MAX Power shareholders at a time when the Trump administration has prioritized domestic critical minerals supply chains through various legislative actions and direct government investment.
In early 2024, MAX Power confirmed its drilling discovery of near-surface lithium-rich clays over an extensive area of its Willcox land package along the eastern side of the broader 50-square-mile Playa (refer to April 26, 2024 news release). Much of the rest of the Playa is leased by the U.S. Department of Defense from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Strategic Partnership Update
MAX Power announced a strategic partnership “with a leading Southeast Asian conglomerate that also includes an initial $5 million investment. This entity is based in Vietnam and has received final Vietnam government approvals this week for the Transaction. This also represents the corporate investor’s first entry into Canada and reflects growing international interest in natural hydrogen. MAX Power expects to close the transaction in the coming days with the corporate investor. Closing remains subject to the final approval of the CSE.”
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