As many as 3 million abandoned oil and gas wells fill with waste in the U.S. alone, and while many still contain oil or gas, the owners decided it wasn’t worth it to keep pumping.
“They’ve tried everything,” Prab Sekhon, its CEO Eclipse Energyhe told TechCrunch. “There’s still a ton of oil left behind.”
Eclipse doesn’t have a way to recover that oil, but it does have a way to compress some of the energy they embed on the surface. Instead of pumping harder or injecting something to force the oil to the surface, Eclipse sends microbes to puncture the oil molecules and release their hydrogen.
Instead of thick oil, companies have to deal with only hydrogen gas. “Hydrogen flows much more easily,” Sekhon said, making it easier to extract from the well.
The Houston-based startup, which was spun off from Cemvita, demonstrated the technology at an oil well in California’s San Joaquin Basin last summer. Now, it’s partnering with oilfield services firm Weatherford International to roll out the technology around the world, the startup exclusively told TechCrunch. The first projects will start in January.
“It’s an extension of our team,” Sekhon said of the relationship with Weatherford. “It will be our business arm.”
Eclipse, which was previously known as Gold H2, has been developing the technology for the past several years. Microbes that occur naturally in oil wells, living at the interface between oil and water found in aquifers, were sampled to find those best suited to the job.
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As the microbes consume the oil, they break it down into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Both then flow to the surface, where Eclipse and his partners will finally separate the two. About half of the carbon dioxide is likely to remain in the tank, while the other half could be captured using specialized equipment and either sequestered or used.
The goal, Sekhon said, is to produce low-carbon hydrogen for about 50 cents per kilogram, or same price as hydrogen obtained by cracking natural gas in an industrial plant, a process that releases more carbon dioxide.
The resulting hydrogen could be used in petrochemical plants or burned for energy.
“It takes a liability and turns it into a clean energy asset,” Sekhon said.
