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I think it’s all a bit hypothetical at the moment, maybe a red herring. But Sinopec Star are the only people trying to commercialise helium from geothermal water wells without hydrocarbons, so it’s interesting to look at what they’re doing. Let’s see what the helium results of the pump test look like first and whether there’s any further discussion of water utilisation. HE1 are still pressing the helium as their primary play in Rukwa. Colorado now looks much more profitable with the high grade CO2, maybe there’s some geothermal gain from Rukwa?

The drill stem tests from Itumbulas reported downhole temperatures up to 88°C

Not exactly. It's a pilot plant operated by Sinopec Star, which is Sinopec's green energy development arm. It's main commercial focus is on power generation, so it's primarily a geothermal plant with a helium extraction byproduct. At this stage they are in first stage of commercial operation after testing last year. They have quantified the energy production but not the helium production (apart from purity of extraction). All they've said so far is that it's "provided insights for the industrial-scale production of geothermal water-soluble helium". It's developing technology and no one in the world has done it at commercial scale yet but it's promising, so HE1 will be at the cutting edge if they can make it work.

The possible link to consider here is the promised but unrealised development of the Songwe geothermal field (similar low-to-medium temperature range), driven by the same basement fault system that HE1 are targeting. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geothermics.2025.103347

The point of comparison with the Chinese project is that the geothermal side of Sinopec's plant makes their helium extraction from water commercially viable in the absence of valuable hydrocarbons. It would be interesting to know more about HE1's water management and utilisation plans. They've mentioned irrigation but is the heat source also exploitable (e.g. for greenhouse projects or local energy generation)?

Link to press update here

https://www.prnewswire.com/ae/news-releases/sinopecs-first-geothermal-power-production-pilot-project-connects-to-grid-302297222.html

Here's an update on Sinopec's Weihe Basin project, which is now on stream and coproducing geothermal water/energy with commercial helium (no hydrocarbons), the first of its kind in the world, using a similar process engineering to HE1's proposed plant (membrane separation and PSA). The conditions are bit different, with water coming to surface at over 100 degrees (but still medium-low temperature for geothermal).

"During the heating season, the project extracts geothermal water for heating and simultaneous helium extraction for low-load power generation. In the non-heating season, it operates at full load for continuous power generation, also extracting helium. The facility heats an area of 120,000 square meters and generates 700,000 kWh annually.

Sinopec Star has tackled the core technologies to extract the "golden gas" – helium - in geothermal wells, which is of great strategic importance and widely applied in numerous fields, including aerospace, R&D, healthcare, and industrial productions. As a major manufacturing country, China has a high demand for helium, but has long relied heavily on imports. Helium is mainly extracted from natural gas, coal bed methane, and by-products of air separation units that contain helium.

Located in the Weihe Basin, the project area is rich in water-soluble and free helium, along with other gas resources. Sinopec's experts have discovered unusually high helium concentrations in the region's geothermal wells. At its Xianyang site, Sinopec Star has advanced the separation and purification of water-soluble helium, achieving 99.99% pure helium through membrane separation and variable pressure adsorption technologies. This success has provided insights for the industrial-scale production of geothermal water-soluble helium."

Peaky - there are forward plans for both Colorado and Rukwa. In Colorado that should mean adding more infill and extension wells to maximise the processing plant capacity, and then enabling the CO2 production stream. In Rukwa, a positive test result would lead to an initial development plan for five wells plus an early stage production plant, a pilot to provide proof of concept, operating for six months, leading then to a final decision whether to pursue investment in the larger field development project.

On the basis of the last RNS I'd imagine an update on completion of the testing, or shortly after opening up the well if that all goes to plan.

"It is anticipated that this testing phase will take two to three weeks to complete. The Company will provide further updates as operations progress."

There’s some variability in local markets but spot prices have been lower than contract prices, which is relevant to the search for short term versus contract customers. Not sure what the local off take market is like around Colorado but, as far as I’m aware, Galactica will produce (fairly cheap) lower grade helium and (fairly expensive) high grade CO2.

https://www.gasworld.com/feature/helium-oversupply-has-reshaped-market-dynamics/2165918.article/

Not sure I’ve much to offer. All seems to be going forward, which is good news. BNL publish a lot of operational updates to ASX that wouldn’t necessarily make ‘news’ as an RNS in London, but HE1 are bound to recirculate them. As far as I can see, the first delivery trailer is waiting for the right customers. Getting that right is important because ideally they need one or two short term sales before fixing any long term contracts. There are two reasons. First, the US helium price fell dramatically last year but has been recovering. It would be prudent to avoid locking any forward contracts into a low price in a rising market. Second, they don’t know their stabilised volume output yet, so they can’t make reliable forward supply commitments to larger customers. In addition, new kids on the block and existing suppliers won’t be giving up customers lightly in a slightly oversupplied market. They’re doing all the right things with a strategic sales approach. Hopefully they can bag their first customer soon, ideally in time to boost the SP before the Rukwa test.

I think MC's timeline sounds realistic or slightly optimistic. It' hard to imagine it going much quicker. Install assumes no delays, cable handling snags and smooth wellbore conditions (although they'll have a good handle on that from withdrawing the previous well string). Gas liberation will depend on permeability, connectivity and water behaviour in the fractured basement. An expectation of gas pockets slugging and stabilising might work out or might prove simplistic in a dynamic water system. It's a gas charged aquifier so the response with drawdown might be harder to predict than say a conventional oil/gas reservoir (i.e. gas liberation might or might not conform to assumptions about saturation versus pressure drop, and we don't know whether water replenishment will affect pressure drop). The ESP is there primarily to drive a flow of fluid, hopefully a stable one at the optimum 20,000 barrels a day. With luck, there may be a bonus gas flow too, either intermittent or stable, but as no-one knows presumably it's prudent not to go too far in prejudging the results. Then they'll need both the ESP results and the revised hydrological studies before deciding if they have enough to revise the CPR. If they announce they're commissioning a new CPR then that would be a very positive sign. Hopefully the market will keep building confidence in Colorado production during the period of waiting.

Honestly, someone posts "great news" and your double act response is negativity? wtf?

That is literally what I said, it's great news that everything is on site in January, great news! Where on earth is the negativity?

Great news! More than half the battle in rural Tanzania is import bureaucracy and logistics.

It was a genuine question. You wrote...

"The Sproule-ERCE CPR (May 2025) was the first time independent experts looked at the pressure readings and confirmed: "Yes, this isn't just dissolved gas; there is a primary gas cap here.""

I'm asking where it says that.

Where does the Sproule-ERCE CPR say there's a primary gas cap? Both the Karoo and basement targets revealed stores of gas in water rather than free gas traps. The CPR explicitly ruled out a gas cap. It literally says, "there is no structural or stratigraphic closure present, and the helium is diffuse within the aquifer." They're pumping fluids to the surface, where degassing is the first stage of processing. The caveat is that samples were taken as liquid, so there's always a chance they've underestimated "due to the possibility of gas and water flowing separately in the pipeline when sampled, as well as gas found in the water train exiting the separator (suggesting GWR is greater than data)". Another reason why we're all hopeful for the outcome of appraisal. And if the project development progresses they'll continue to explore the licence area for shallow gas traps too, alongside the targeted play.

Same old accusations, and yet no interest in accounts urging everyone to buy shares and and hold them all the way down from 0.9p to 0.3p during the CLN financing agreement. How did that go for all those currently 50% down? And no interest at all in the same accounts claiming to have traded profitably in direct contradiction to the advice they posted. And you think I'm the secret trader? Hilarious.

The company modelling takes a 30+ year development timeframe, for the ten year licence (2035), first ten year renewal (2045) and out to January 2058

From the CPR...

"3.5.1. Liquid Production Rate

Helium One plans to use Electric Submersible Pumps (“ESPs”) in their subsurface production wells. These pumps are designed to deliver 20,000 bbl/d of water. Helium One has used a dynamic model to model the production rate by varying subsurface properties. A large aquifer is also modelled. Sproule ERCE finds this model suitable for scenario planning, recognising the large uncertainties associated with the subsurface at present. If the wells are far enough apart, the model indicates that the liquid rate does not decrease with time—it remains constant at 20,000 bbl/d per well...."

[note, that's liquid extraction rate not helium gas rate]

"As there is no plan to reinject the produced liquid, reservoir pressure could fall quicker than expected and, therefore, liquid rates will decrease. If reservoir pressure fell quicker than expected, there would be a CAPEX risk for re-injection and a risk of helium concentration dilution as the re-injected depleted fluid reaches the producer wells. The EPS attempts to mitigate some of these risks before larger scale development is entered into.

It is possible that GWR and helium concentrations will decline with water production over time. However, it is impossible to estimate if and how this will occur at present, which is reflected in Sproule-ERCE’s estimates of both GWR and He%."

Note the bit at the end of the article on China, which suggests striking similarities to the theory modelled in Rukwa targeting nitrogen rich carrier gas from structural uplifts in fractured basement.

"Closer to the reservoirs, nitrogen-rich natural gas becomes the main carrier. Wells with higher nitrogen consistently contain more helium, and the highest concentrations occur in uplifted, shallow structural highs. This combination of shallow depth, low pressure, and strong structural uplift creates ideal conditions for trapping the gas that never reacts."

"While some helium is dissolved in the water (acting as a carrier), the vast majority of the high-grade concentration (5.5%+) must exist as Free Gas because the water simply doesn't have the "room" to hold that much helium in solution."

Great analogy! Yes and no on the last bit. The estimated 5.5% helium concentration relates to proportion of gas liberated from the water rather than the volume of fluid being pumped (best case 20,000 barrels a day at full capacity). The model assumes a gas water ratio around 0.25 (i.e. hoping that a quarter of what is pumped might surface as gas). The hope is that helium might average around 5.5% of that 25%. So, in the best case scenario modelled for the feasibility study, the assumption is that around 1.3% of the total volume being pumped could be helium.