The brown and rust-red mountains that make up the spine of the northern UAE and Oman are more than a site for nature and recreation.

They might also host a key part of these countries’ energy future. Natural hydrogen and carbon mineralisation company Decahydron wants to find subsurface wealth beyond traditional oil and gas.

At the Adipec conference in Abu Dhabi this month, Decahydron unveiled the discovery of natural hydrogen in a well drilled in Sharjah. Chief executive Arnaud Lager announced the company had a strategic investment from global drilling and energy services group Weatherford in place. And it sealed a collaboration with Sharjah National Oil Corporation and Siemens Energy to work on a power station using the clean fuel.

This progress ties together two topics at different stages of the cycle of innovative enthusiasm, disappointment and realism. From 2020, there was a surge of interest into hydrogen, a clean fuel that yields only water when it burns, and that can be made using abundant and increasingly cheap renewable energy.

But it has proved harder than hoped-for to produce “green” hydrogen at competitive costs and to find users willing to pay a substantial premium. The light hydrogen molecule is hard to transport worldwide, while converting it into more convenient forms takes energy and further expenditure.

Geoscientists and oil and gas explorers have for a few years had a different idea. Hydrogen is produced within the Earth by a variety of processes. One famous occurrence of subsurface hydrogen is at the village of Bourakébougou in Mali, where it powers a small local power plant.

Perhaps this natural or geologic hydrogen, sometimes termed “white” or “gold”, is more widespread than pre