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Recent studies, conducted by a group of international scientists led by Laurent Truche, show that natural hydrogen reserves may exist in these galleries of the Bulqiza mine, created by the very geological processes that formed these rocks.
Slow but continuous reactions between iron-rich minerals and water have produced this light gas, keeping it trapped in underground structures.
"The latest study that was conducted and published in 2025 with many gas and water analyses, and especially gas with many isotopic analyses, confirms the abiotic origin of hydrogen," said Bardhyl Muceku, professor at the Polytechnic University of Tirana.
"The isolated gas content, not being in contact with the mine air or the atmosphere, has been analyzed in nearly 17 laboratories around the world ," said Muceku.
"In these analyses, it is not only this analysis that has confirmed this, there are also isotopic analyses that have been done on the hydrogen itself, which confirm the abiotic origin ," the professor says.
The study, published in the scientific journal "Science", confirms that a significant amount of natural hydrogen is being released in the mine galleries. Measurements show that the gas emerging from the underground contains up to 84% hydrogen, an unusual percentage that places Bulqiza among the most important cases documented to date.
"We report direct measurements of a high rate of hydrogen outgassing of 84% from the deep underground Bulqiza chrome mine in Albania. A minimum of 200 tons of hydrogen is extracted annually from the mine galleries, making it one of the largest hydrogen flow rates recorded to date."
"The fact that for years, almost 10 years now, this ratio has not changed, so we have done analyses every year and the ratio of methane to hydrogen is almost the same, it does not change, the amount of gas that comes out there is the same. For more than 10 years we have had an amount of 200 tons per year that are released and this leads us to the conclusion that we have something that is not depleting over time, but it is not a large amount to be economically profitable at the moment," said Bardhyl Muceku.
Until now, hydrogen has been considered the energy of the future, but it is produced at high cost and with pollution, mainly from natural gas. In Bulqiza, however, it is occurring naturally, without industrial intervention. The study provides a clear interpretation, according to which the results indicate the presence of a deep reservoir, connected to a tectonic rift zone.
Three different scenarios for hydrogen production were considered: decrepitation of hydrogen trapped in the rock, active serpentinization at low temperature, and the third scenario, the release of hydrogen trapped within the fracture zone, which acts as a reservoir.
The conclusion is clear, the current flow cannot be explained by active processes alone. This pushes the interpretation towards a stronger idea: the existence of a deposit accumulated over the years. In this sense, the chrome mine is not the source of the gas. It is only the point where the gas has come to the surface…
" It is worth studying here in the case of the Bulqiza massif, because we are fortunate enough to be able to go down to a depth of up to 1,000 meters ," says Muceku.
If we have a reservoir, then the question immediately arises: how big is it and can it be exploited economically? It must be said that the study raises some clear limitations. It is not known exactly how quickly this gas is regenerated, how long the reservoir will last, and what impact human intervention would have on this delicate system.
“ Considering the estimated range of fracture volume and the same porosity, the measured flow rate could be maintained for 25 to 238 years. In other words, the total amount of hydrogen stored in the fracture zone would range from 5,000 to 50,000 tons . ”
"It's a very wide range, if it were 5 thousand it wouldn't be very beneficial, if it were 50 thousand it would certainly have an average benefit for the economy ," said Bardhyl Muceku, professor at the Polytechnic University of Tirana./ InsideStory
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