By Quinn O’Hara

Last night, January 30th, the High Plains Resources group held an information town hall in Clay Center.

High Plains Resources, or HPR, invited landowners and other interested stakeholders to the meeting to explain the process of extracting hydrogen from beneath the earth’s surface.

Jason Rayburn, a spokesperson for HPR, says the process begins with sending shockwaves into the earth to determine the possibility of hydrogen in the area. This process is referred to as ‘Shooting Seismic.’

If hydrogen is located nearby, HPR will then get in contact with the landowner to start the process:

Rayburn says HPR tries to make their operation as minimally invasive as possible:

Rayburn says hydrogen extraction will begin soon after the construction of the production pad:

Once the operation is finished, Rayburn says the extraction hole will be plugged, and the land on which the extraction took place will be returned to how it was before the operation to the best of HPR’s ability.

Rayburn says this year will be HPR’s first attempt at physically extracting the hydrogen:

Rayburn says despite this being HPR’s first year of actual attempts at hydrogen production, he and several other HPR officials and partners have many years of prior experience in gas resources and related fields.

Rayburn says HPR is currently unsure if fracking will be necessary:

Regardless of HPR’s ability to successfully extract hydrogen, Rayburn says landowners will receive compensation for allowing HPR on their land.