Was this posted yesterday?21 Jul 2023 09:05
Helium One will shortly be drilling at Rukwa, and this time with its own, specialist rig
by Alastair Ford
Shares in Helium One Global Ltd (AIM:HE1, OTCQB:HLOGF) jumped by not far short of 100% early in July after the company announced the acquisition of a drill rig.
Ownership of the rig will allow the company it to set its own terms when it comes to drilling the potential huge Rukwa project in Tanzania later this year.
“Everybody recognised the challenges we faced in Tanzania getting an oil and gas type drilling rig,” says Lorna Blaisse, who was appointed chief executive of the company in February.
The rig is due to arrive at site shortly, and the expectation is that the Tai-C well will be drilled in September.
The most obvious difference between this rig and a mining rig that was used before is that it is much more powerful.
Mining rigs are primarily designed to bring up core from large ore bodies in competent rock, which means that the borehole diameter is a much slimmer design. Conventional oil and gas wells are drilled with a wider borehole diameter, as they typically drill through softer rock, and a larger hole diameter is required to improve wellbore stability.
The new Helium One-owned rig will drill the target reservoir section in standard 8.5inch hole, as opposed to the 3.5inch hole drilled in the previous round of drilling. It is a larger rig with a top drive system and, can therefore drill more efficiently.
The new rig is capable of drilling down to depths of between 2,000-metres and -2,400 metres, although the Tai prospect that Helium One is aiming for is reckoned to sit at around 1,200 metres.
The plan is to spend 30 days drilling, including logging and down-hole sampling, and then to wrap it up and assess the results.
All told, the results are likely to be far more conclusive.That will make a nice contrast to the earlier round of drilling, which lingered on for months as the company grappled with various issues associated with the mining rig it was using.
That work includes upgrading access roads and placing a camp close to the wellsite. But it won’t take long.
The company is fully funded for the planned well, following a £10mln fundraise in December last year, and there may even be enough for a second well, depending on outcomes.
“The Tai-1/-1A well was very encouraging, although we weren’t able to reach our total depth nor run a full set of wireline logs. We did have shows, but unless you’ve got wireline log data to determine pay zones, then you’ve no way of quantifying your results
The expectation is that this time round the drilling work will be far more definitive.
And if, as Blaisse hopes, Helium One does make a discovery, the potential scale is likely to be very significant.
At the end of May a competent person’s report reckoned that there might be as much as 2.8bn cubic feet of helium at Tai alone, an amount that equates to around half of the current global demand.
There are other prospects