Eclipse generated hydrogen for 30 days at a West Texas oil field

By Daniel Okafor

Eclipse generated hydrogen for 30 consecutive days at an aging West Texas oil field before stopping its pilot. The Houston startup spent a month at the site, which nears the end of its commercial life. Eclipse uses microbes to break down oil in end-of-life wells and release hydrogen for collection through existing infrastructure.

Eclipse says projects at mature oil fields could produce hydrogen for 10 to 20 years. The company believes low costs could make the gas useful for clean baseload electricity. Existing infrastructure could reduce deployment time and production cost, Eclipse says.

What does Eclipse know about the hydrogen underground?

Prabhdeep Singh Sekhon, Eclipse’s CEO and a former oil-and-gas industry worker, says depleted fields retain valuable hydrocarbons. “When you produce these oil fields, you’re lucky if you produce 40% of the oil,” he said.

“There’s still a tremendous amount of hydrocarbon in the ground; it’s just not economic to produce. If there’s hydrocarbon, that also inherently means there’s also hydrogen,” Sekhon said.

How do microbes unlock the gas?

Hydrogen combustion produces only water vapor. The broader commercial case includes potential emissions cuts in steel production and ships. But affordability remains the obstacle.

Green hydrogen uses renewable electricity to split water, an expensive and water-intensive process. Hydrogen made with natural gas also carries a high cost for carbon capture. “Natural” or geologic hydrogen, which searches for underground hydrogen reservoirs, has not proved commercially viable.

Eclipse built a huge database of microbes found in oil fields, then created its own microbial mix to capture hydrogen from oil left in abandoned wells. The company injects the microbes into reservoirs, where they “eat” the oil and release hydrogen gas.

The process also releases carbon dioxide. Eclipse says some CO2 remains underground and that operators can capture the emissions. The company describes the resulting hydrogen as clean and ultra-low-carbon.

Hydrogen, a lightweight molecule, moves through reservoirs and can reach the surface through wells already in place. In Texas, microbes injected into one well sent hydrogen to a second well about 600 feet away. Eclipse ran a smaller California pilot last year.

The company says the Texas test demonstrated that the process can work under more difficult geological and chemical conditions. That result supports a route to fields where the remaining oil no longer supports conventional production.

Can old infrastructure make hydrogen cheaper?

Eclipse’s route does not require the expensive exploration associated with finding natural hydrogen. The company says it already knows where the hydrogen is and can use wells, surface facilities and rights-of-way built for oil production.

“You have billions of dollars in a field that’s already been deployed—the wells are drilled, the surface facilities are installed, the [rights-of-way] are there,” Sekhon said. He said this reuse reduces project deployment time and production cost.

The technology still needs optimization before commercial use, and scaling could prove difficult, said Geoffrey Ellis. Ellis studied geologic hydrogen at the U.S. Geological Survey and now teaches at Stanford.

“The resource potential is enormous,” he said. “There’s a lot of hydrocarbons in the subsurface that are unrecoverable. If we can convert that economically into hydrogen, that would be a game changer.”

What happens to wells headed for closure?

Weatherford partnered on the Texas project. The oil-field services company sees commercial value in wells that operators otherwise must plug and abandon.

Depinder Sandhu, Weatherford’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, said: “For an operator, a field that’s about to become a cost can become a source of revenue, its productive life is extended, and plugging costs are pushed out.”

The process works best with wells that have not yet been plugged. Sandhu said operators need a clear regulatory path to switch an old well to hydrogen production instead of closure.

“If we get the economics, execution model and policy right, this stops being a pilot story and becomes a way to manage end-of-life assets across the industry,” he said.

What could Eclipse charge for hydrogen?

An independent analysis from energy consultancy Wood found that Eclipse’s hydrogen could cost as little as 56 cents per kilogram when the company scales up. Wood’s analysis said the process could potentially become the cheapest way to make hydrogen.

Hydrogen made from natural gas commonly serves fertilizer producers. Fertilizer production is a major source of greenhouse-gas emissions. Eclipse’s low-cost hydrogen could serve that market and support broader uses, including electricity generation.

Where will the first commercial market appear?

Sekhon says Eclipse is forming partnerships with data-center developers that want to build next to a power source. The company is also evaluating:

• Fuel for heavy-duty transportation
• Industrial heat
• Feedstock for fertilizer and other chemicals

“Our goal is in the next two to three years that we have a commercial project,” Sekhon said. The next test is commercial execution. Eclipse must optimize the microbes, test the 56-cent-per-kilogram cost at scale and secure a regulatory path that lets operators switch wells from closure to hydrogen.

Without those pieces, the 30-day West Texas result will remain a pilot. With them, Sekhon’s model could turn plugging liabilities into hydrogen assets across the oil industry.