After helping to discover the world’s first deposit of natural hydrogen in West Africa, which kick-started a search for the buried gas around the world, Denis Brière hopes his next breakthrough will be in Canada.
Brière is a petrophysicist and vice-president of Calgary-based Chapman Hydrogen and Petroleum Engineering, which plans to begin testing and drilling in northern Ontario this summer in the hopes of finding enough hydrogen underground to produce and market the gas.
For the longest time, no one was even looking for hydrogen — they didn’t think natural deposits existed because the element was too small, and there wasn’t much demand for the gas, anyway.
That’s changed considerably. Hydrogen
