“For more than two centuries, humanity has been producing hydrogen in its bound form — hydrocarbons — without realizing it. Oil and gas are not primary energy sources — they are secondary compounds, products of hydrogen degassing from the mantle and its reaction with carbon in the crust.”
Every industry has its blind spots
Ideas can sit in plain sight, ignored for decades, until the data make them impossible to dismiss. For the energy world, that moment is arriving — and it centers on a single realization: hydrogen came first.
A few months ago, a quiet paper appeared in Mineralogy. No fanfare, no press release — just data. And yet, what it describes may redefine the next century of energy.
A team from St. Petersburg University and the Russian Academy of Sciences studied mantle xenoliths from Zhokhov Island in the Arctic — fragments of the deep Earth carried upward by ancient volcanism. Inside the crystals of olivine and spinel, they found solid hydrocarbons — kerogen and bitumen — sealed inside minerals that have never been touched by life.
At about 700 °C and nearly 10 000 atm, in an environment almost devoid of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon combined freely. The implication is simple and profound:
Hydrocarbons are being formed in the mantle — independent of biology.
Dr. Vladimir Larin saw it coming half a century ago
In 1968, Dr. Vladimir Larin introduced the Primordially Hydridic Earth model. He argued that our planet was born saturated with hydrogen, locked within metal hydrides, and that its gradual release over geological time created water, methane, and heavier hydrocarbons. At the time, it sounded radical. Today, observations align with his equations point for point: the same reducing conditions, the same CO₂ + CO mixtures, the same absence of oxygen, the same deep-Earth chemistry at work. The model that once challenged convention is now quietly aligning with experimental reality.
Two centuries of producing hydrogen — without knowing it
Look closely at the word hydrocarbons. For two hundred years we’ve drilled, refined, and traded one of hydrogen’s own compounds, convinced we were in the oil business. In truth, we were always in the hydrogen business — just working with it in a heavier, carbon-bound form. Every barrel of crude, every cubic meter of gas, every molecule of fuel carries the same fingerprint: energy rooted in hydrogen released from the Earth’s interior.
Oil and gas are not the origin of energy.They are its residue — the slow echo of a deeper process that never stopped.
The real transition begins below the crust
If hydrogen is the root from which oil, gas, and even water descend, then “energy production” is not production at all — it’s participation. We don’t manufacture energy; we connect to a planetary process that predates us by billions of years. This reframes the entire energy transition. We’re not moving away from hydrocarbons — we’re tracing them back to their source. And once we do, the transition stops being a policy debate and becomes a scientific inevitability.
The evidence is growing — and so is the silence
The Zhokhov Island discovery is not an anomaly. Similar findings are emerging from Yakutia, Kamchatka, and deep African cratons. Wherever scientists probe beneath the Earth’s crust, they find the same law at work: hydrogen and carbon combine under mantle conditions to form hydrocarbons — no fossils, no organics, only the physics and chemistry of the Earth itself. At some point, the question “Is abiogenic oil possible?” becomes obsolete. When bitumen is found sealed inside olivine, the conversation moves on. The next step isn’t debate. It’s acknowledgment.
Beyond colors and buzzwords
We’ve started assigning colors to hydrogen — green, blue, grey, pink — turning chemistry into marketing. All of this misses the essential point: the Earth still emits hydrogen naturally, quietly, continuously, and cleanly. No factory. No electrolyzer. No carbon footprint. It has no color, no cost curve — only a geological rhythm we’re finally beginning to measure. The same hydrogen that once built our oceans and atmosphere still rises through fractures and faults. Learning to understand and harvest that flow responsibly may prove to be the most important step in the evolution of energy since the discovery of oil itself.
A message to those who built the previous energy era
The oil & gas industry mastered complexity long before it became fashionable — exploration risk, capital discipline, logistics, and chemistry at planetary scale. That experience isn’t obsolete. It’s indispensable.
The next chapter won’t be written by those simulating surface reactions, but by those who know how to turn geology into industry.
If you are part of that world, this is your moment to lead again. Because what comes next is not a green revolution — it’s a return to origin. And the companies that built the last energy century are the only ones with the depth, the rigor, and the courage to build the next one.
The simple truth beneath it all
For two centuries, we have extracted the by-products of hydrogen. Now we have the opportunity — and the responsibility — to extract hydrogen itself: the first element, the pure source. Primordial hydrogen is not a slogan, not a funding trend, and not a color on a chart. It is the Earth’s ongoing act of creation — measurable, verifiable, already documented in dozens of locations worldwide. To ignore it now would be like ignoring oil in 1850.
The data are in. The door is open. And for those willing to look deeper, the next era of energy has already begun.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Energy News. This content is presented as the author’s analysis based on available information at the time of writing. It should not be considered as representative of Energy News or its editorial stance. Readers are encouraged to consider this as one perspective among many and to form their own opinions based on multiple sources.
