The figures behind the claim
Hydrogen from rock is a credible resource and an unproven product. Iron-rich rock reacts with water to release hydrogen, and the drilling and stimulation tools to reach it come from geothermal and from oil and gas. What no one has shown is a commercial well that produces hydrogen at a steady, measured rate. Until one does, a cost per kilogram is a model output, and the number worth watching is a flow rate.
What the company is claiming
The claim comes from a young company with an oil and gas pedigree, and it is stated with more confidence than the field has evidence for.
Anning Corporation is a Houston company founded in 2024 and led by Sophie Broun, a former Chevron senior leader with more than 15 years in upstream oil and gas. It describes itself as a stimulated geologic hydrogen company. It proposes to use iron-rich rock deep in the subsurface, with technology adapted from geothermal and from oil and gas drilling, to produce hydrogen directly from the ground.
The headline number is a production cost of about $0.79 per pound of hydrogen, roughly $1.74 per kilogram on the firm's conversion, and the company's stated mission is to deliver carbon-free hydrogen cheaper than gasoline. Its website carries a target cost of $1.50 per kilogram, a resource potential of 100 million barrels of oil equivalent per prospect, and a project scale of 500 megawatts. It also states an ambition for hydrogen to meet 15 percent of total energy demand by 2050.
Those are company figures, and the company is early. In a filing to the California Energy Commission dated 2025-08-07, it described its first California project as an exploratory drilling and laboratory testing program, said it aims to de-risk the technology in phases, and wrote that to its knowledge no commercial stimulated geologic hydrogen project has been attempted in the US.
A cost per kilogram is a projection until a well flows. The first number that matters is a flow rate.
Why the geology is plausible
The chemistry behind the claim is established, and that is why serious research groups are working on the engineering.
Hydrogen is released when water reacts with certain iron-bearing rocks, and the reaction speeds up with heat. Geologists have found natural hydrogen seeping from rock in several parts of the world, and a growing set of research programs is working on how to encourage the reaction on purpose, through temperature, pressure and fluid chemistry. Those programs include university teams funded by the US Department of Energy and laboratory studies in Australia and the United Kingdom.
The company's approach is described as stimulation: water and heat applied to target rock to drive the reaction in place, using the reservoir modeling, drilling and completion practices that the geothermal and oil and gas industries already run. That lineage means the tooling exists, the service companies exist, and the safety record of comparable operations is documented. Hydrogen output from a stimulated rock volume at commercial rates remains the open question, because no one has yet measured it.
The gasoline comparison
The comparison to gasoline is arithmetic on a simple equivalence, and the arithmetic is favorable on paper.
A kilogram of hydrogen carries roughly the energy of a gallon of gasoline, the equivalence the company itself uses in its California filing. On that basis $1.74 per kilogram is $1.74 per gallon-equivalent. The filing cites a California gasoline average of about $4.50 per gallon, so the headline production cost works out to about 39 percent of that price on the firm's arithmetic, which is illustrative. The same filing cites an estimate of $0.5 to $1 per kilogram, attributed to the IEA and reproduced in a Sandia National Laboratories overview, for geologic hydrogen in general. The company's $1.74 figure sits above that range.
A production cost is a price at the wellhead. A fuel is only a fuel once it has been compressed, moved and stored.
A production cost is also a different quantity from a pump price. Gasoline's retail price includes refining margins, distribution and taxes. Hydrogen's delivered price would add separation and purification, compression, transport, storage and dispensing, and none of those is stated to be inside the headline figure. Per-mile economics depend on the vehicle, which an energy-equivalent comparison does not capture.
| Claim | On the record | Still open |
|---|---|---|
| Hydrogen forms in iron-rich rock | Established chemistry; natural hydrogen found in several regions; active university and government research | Whether stimulation can sustain commercial rates from a drilled well |
| About $0.79 per pound | A company projection; a $1.50 per kilogram target on the company website | Independent verification, and cost at flow rates no one has measured |
| Cheaper than gasoline | Energy equivalence of about a kilogram to a gallon; a California average near $4.50 per gallon cited in the filing | Delivered cost: purification, compression, transport, storage, dispensing |
| 500 MW per project | Stated as a per-project figure on the company website | Well count, decline behavior, field life |
| Stage | An exploratory drilling and laboratory testing program described in a 2025 filing | A first commercial well; the company states none of this type has been attempted in the US |
What would change if it works
Hydrogen from the ground at gasoline-competitive cost would change several parts of the energy system at once.
Each of these depends on the same unmeasured quantity. Supply, infrastructure, power and pricing all follow from how much hydrogen a stimulated well delivers, for how long, and at what cost to bring it to specification.
What to watch
A short list of measurements will say more about this resource than any cost projection.
Flow rate from a stimulated well
Hydrogen produced per day, measured at the wellhead over a test long enough to show how the well behaves.
Decline behavior
Whether output holds, falls off or can be restored, which determines how many wells a project of any size would need.
Purity and by-products
The composition of what comes out of the ground and what it costs to bring it to specification.
Inputs per kilogram
Water, heat and energy consumed for each kilogram produced, since they sit inside any honest cost figure.
Conclusion
Geologic hydrogen has moved from a curiosity to a funded field, and Anning's claim is a clear statement of where the field hopes to land. The chemistry is real, the tooling is borrowed from industries that know how to drill, and the company is candid that no commercial project of this type has been attempted in the US. The firm's view is that the right posture is interest without belief: the cost figure is a hypothesis, and the measurements that would test it are specific and observable.
The rock supplies the hydrogen. The well supplies the proof. Until a well flows at a steady rate, the price is a story, and the flow rate is the fact.
Sources: Interview coverage of Anning Corporation CEO Sophie Broun (Interesting Engineering, 2026-10-17); Anning Corporation website; Anning Corporation comments to the California Energy Commission, Docket 25-EPIC-01 (2025-08-07), which cite the IEA estimate as reproduced by Sandia National Laboratories; public research programs on geologic hydrogen. Figures described as the firm's arithmetic are illustrative derivations from publicly reported values and are not forecasts. For informational purposes only; not investment advice.
