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A geology question has been quietly building in southwestern corner of the Canadian province Saskatchewan for the better part of a year, and it just got a partial answer. Drilling crews working hundreds of miles apart have now found similar signs of natural hydrogen and helium in the ground, raising the possibility that what looked like an isolated discovery might actually be part of something much larger.
The company behind both wells, MAX Power Mining Corp. (CSE: MAXX), announced that an independent petrophysical review by GLJ Ltd., a Calgary, Alberta based energy advisory firm, identified multiple promising natural hydrogen and helium zones at its Bracken well. Bracken sits roughly 200 miles southwest of the company’s earlier Lawson Discovery, which had already been described as Canada’s first confirmed subsurface natural hydrogen system. GLJ’s involvement matters here because it offers a check from outside the company on whether MAX Power’s own technical interpretation holds up, and according to the release, it does.
What makes this notable is not just that hydrogen showed up at Bracken, but where it showed up. The well, drilled to a depth of 8,500 feet in March 2026, sits within the company’s 290 square mile Grasslands Project, an area that had never previously been drilled for either hydrogen or helium. GLJ’s analysis pointed to several distinct geological intervals worth testing, stretching from the Precambrian basement up through Cambrian sandstone and into Devonian carbonate rock. Finding indicators across that many layers in a single well suggests the possibility of multiple stacked targets rather than a single thin zone, which would be a meaningful difference if it holds up under further testing.
The science behind natural hydrogen is still relatively young. The idea that hydrogen gas can accumulate underground in usable quantities was, until recently, considered unlikely by much of the geology community. That changed after a series of discoveries in Mali, Albania, and elsewhere prompted renewed interest, and the U.S. Geological Survey has since estimated that global underground hydrogen reserves could be vast, though only a small fraction would likely be recoverable. More than 50 companies globally were investing in natural hydrogen exploration by late 2023, and the pace has only picked up since, though only around 20 wells worldwide have actually been drilled in search of it, underscoring how early-stage the sector remains.
Saskatchewan brings an additional wrinkle to this story: helium. The province already produces about 3% of the world’s helium supply and has set a goal of reaching 10% by 2030 under its provincial Helium Action Plan, owing to geology that allows helium to be extracted from dedicated wells rather than as a byproduct of natural gas production. If Bracken’s helium signals are confirmed through testing, it would add a second, already commercially proven resource to a hydrogen story that is still unproven at scale.
MAX Power plans to begin completions and testing at Bracken in the second half of July, running alongside a separate multi well program at Lawson aimed at proving out commercial viability there. The company also holds an equity stake in Homeland Critical Minerals, a company that owns a lithium project in Arizona MAX Power had a hand in discovering, though that asset sits apart from the Saskatchewan hydrogen work. Bracken also lies just 12 miles north of the Montana border, which the company suggests could point to a hydrogen and helium trend extending into the United States.
None of this confirms a commercially producible resource yet. What it does confirm is that the geological pattern behind Lawson was not a one off. Whether that pattern extends across the wider basin, and whether it can be extracted economically, are questions the upcoming testing programs are specifically designed to answer.
