QIMC's Downhole Data Push Reframes Hydrogen Exploration

QIMC deploys a multi-method downhole program at Advocate, logging hydrogen readings above 1,000 ppmv and extending drilling to 700 metres

15 Apr 2026

Natural hydrogen exploration has long suffered from a basic problem: nobody agrees on how to look for it. At the Advocate project in North America, QIMC is attempting to fix that, deploying one of the most comprehensive downhole survey programs the sector has yet seen.

Working with specialist contractor SEMM Geoservice, the company ran televiewer imaging, electrical resistivity tomography, density logging, permeability and porosity testing, and direct gas measurement within a single campaign in drill hole 26-02. Combining geochemical, structural, and rock-physics data in one pass is an approach conventional hydrocarbon exploration takes for granted. For natural hydrogen, it remains novel.

The results were encouraging, if carefully hedged. Hydrogen concentrations peaked above 1,000 parts per million by volume in intervals tied to major fault zones, with the primary concentration sitting between 128 and 146 metres. Notably, key sampled intervals showed no methane or carbon dioxide. Senior Project Geologist Edward Procyshyn said this signature is "consistent with a deep hydrogen-bearing fluid system rather than a shallow biogenic source," a distinction that matters enormously for assessing whether what lies below is commercially useful or merely geologically interesting.

That finding was enough to extend the original 500-metre target to approximately 700 metres. A drill has been mobilised for a third hole, with four additional holes planned across the 2026 campaign. CEO John Karagiannidis said the datasets are "enhancing the team's ability to characterize permeability and fluid pathways."

The sector's problem has always been structural. Unlike oil and gas, natural hydrogen lacks standardised exploration workflows, leaving companies to improvise methods that peers cannot easily replicate or verify. By pairing direct sampling with imaging and rock-physics measurements, QIMC and SEMM Geoservice are assembling something closer to a repeatable protocol.

Whether that protocol is pointing toward a system of meaningful scale remains the open question. Fault-hosted signals at depth are promising; they are not proof. The 700-metre extension and the coming drill holes will test whether the technical coherence assembled at Advocate reflects a hydrogen system with genuine continuity, or a set of intervals that impress on paper but frustrate at the production stage.