Member Info for CuriousCat9

I second that. Excellent ferreting regarding the Brainstorm wells Tiburn!

Following your tracks I note that total oil production to date from L.A. Anderson1 comes to 26,304 BBLs which at current prices would I think be worth around 1.6 million dollars. Worth having if it can be replicated elsewhere.

Given however that L.A. Anderson1 (immediately adjacent to Darwin) and McGowan1 (approx. midway between Darwin and Linda) have apparently both seen fairly extensive extraction of natural gas since 1986 I do wonder whether this might now undermine their helium potential??

Mendell Helium are a producer with an offtake agreement already in place so one can perhaps take this statement with a pinch of salt, but this is from their most recent investor presentation dated November 2024:

‘Helium 4.0 is over – supply is now outpacing demand. Ultra-high prices of recent years are not likely to be sustained’

They have however since released an RNS to say that the helium price agreed with their off-taker is 17% higher than originally modelled which suggests market conditions can't have deteriorated that much!

Could I ask what you make of the oil news Ezhik? Given that these shows were not apparently thought worthy of a mention after the Rudyard drill and were presumably also encountered during the original Weil drill, a cynic might suggest they’re only highlighting them now to distract from the decision not to explore Flathead.

Perhaps noteworthy that these latest options are in addition to those already set out in the Admissions document, but are not however subject to the same SP vesting thresholds:

The Company has also agreed to grant, immediately prior to and conditional on Admission taking

place, options over 10,224,000 new Ordinary Shares, each exercisable at the Placing Price, with

certain vesting conditions, to certain directors of the Company as detailed below. Options to be

granted to David Minchin and Bo Sears shall be effected pursuant to the Helix Exploration Share

Option Plan and the option to be granted to Ryan Neates shall be effected pursuant to the Helix

Exploration Plc Enterprise Management Incentives Plan. The Options may be exercised at any time

following vesting up until the tenth anniversary of the date of grant of each option. In addition, the

Company will have authority to grant additional options pursuant to the Share Option Plans (and any

other share option plan that may be established following Admission) over up to 2,000,000 Ordinary

Shares. Further details of the Share Options Plans are set out in paragraph 11 of this Part VI.

Total Vest 1 Vest 2 Vest 3

David Minchin 4,612,000 1,537,333 1,537,333 1,537,334

Bo Sears 4,612,000 1,537,333 1,537,333 1,537,334

Ryan Neates 1,000,000 333,333 333,333 333,334

Vest 1: Ordinary Shares trading above 20 pence for 20 consecutive trading days.

Vest 2: Ordinary Shares trading above 30 pence for 20 consecutive trading days.

Vest 3: Ordinary Shares trading above 40 pence for 20 consecutive trading days.

Thanks Ezhik. I've no doubt missed a few posts but from those I've seen your predictions regarding the share price on here have proved to be pretty accurate over the last few months so it's good to hear you've decided to buy back in.

If I remember correctly DM's explanation for the divergent hydrogen readings speaking informally during an investor call shortly after the RNS was that the gas sampled at 0.7% hydrogen had likely been liberated from the interface between the mudcake and the formation rock and the hydrogen being a reactive element had therefore simply been consumed by reactions with the drilling mud. To my layman’s ears it certainly sounded plausible, but I have however been led up the garden path by DM on a couple of occasions already now!

I think BS and DM have both suggested in interviews that the Flathead at Clink 1 is just mud-blocked, but in truth all we’ve been told about the reservoir quality of the rock itself is that the porosity is ‘good’ – permeability has never been mentioned. I have however read that unlike in limestones such as that at Charles, porosity and permeability tend to be strongly correlated in pure quartzite sandstones such as that making up the Flathead and was hoping therefore that our good porosity might also entail good permeability, but no doubt it's not as simple as that!

Hi Ezhik.

Not sure if you’ll see this but given your specialist knowledge in the field what realistically are the chances do you think that they’ll actually be able to coax a commercial flow from Flathead following a second drill at a more optimum location?

Apologies if this has already been posted, but Bo Sears is quoted at the end of this article concerning geological hydrogen exploration and its potential:

https://cen.acs.org/energy/hydrogen-power/Trillions-tons-hydrogen-waiting-under/103/i7?sc=250315_sc_eng_tw_cen

'...It’s also possible, if the high end of the USGS estimates bear out, that geological hydrogen could render other types of low-carbon hydrogen obsolete, according to Bo Sears, CEO of Helix Exploration. Helix is mainly interested in geological helium, but at a site in Montana it found hydrogen as well and sees the potential to stimulate the rocks to make more.

Other ways to get low-carbon hydrogen are too dirty, too expensive, or both, Sears told C&EN, and production costs won’t come down in time to put hydrogen at the center of an energy transition that can stave off climate change. “The last remaining hope is geological hydrogen, which would certainly get us to our goal of 1 kg for $1 in 1 decade,” he said. “If it works.”'

So few trades here that someone selling £90's worth of shares can trigger a 7% drop in the share price. Does hint however at how far the share price might move in the opposite direction if we were to finally get some solid evidence the RTO will go ahead, but can't say I'm overly confident atm.

I agree IHNC, though I think I’m probably a bit more pessimistic than you regarding Charles. Generating income and proving that Flathead is capable of decent sustained flow rates would seem to me to be by far the two most important milestones ahead capable of triggering significant rerates. The announcement of a major increase in resources/reserves at Rudyard or excellent results from Charles would also presumably do the same but these are surely possibilities rather than probabilities.

I only dip into this forum intermittently, but I’m always surprised by the number of posts when I do as I think patience will be proved a virtue here. Rudyard is clearly much more than just a safety net for Ingomar now and I’m personally still excited to find out Flathead’s potential in Q3, but with Charles more of a risk I suspect than an opportunity right now and the possibility of another wave of selling pressure to come following the end of the lock-ins in April, best to just tune out, buy the dips and wait until summer in my opinion.

We’ve been told that we have excellent permeability, porosity and gas pressures at Charles so personally I’m expecting Charles to flow and hopefully flow well after stimulation. Whether the helium composition of the gas is more like Flathead than Amsden however is more of a concern for me as we don’t yet know whether it was a seal above or below Charles that prevented upwards migration of helium in significant quantities to Amsden.

I'd assumed from this morning’s RNS that as Charles is limestone and Flathead sandstone the formation damage in the latter had been deemed too extensive to be recoverable by acid stimulation alone so the interview with DM helpfully linked by Troajan below was reassuring. I need to do some research on hydrofluoric acid stimulation, but that HEX need to wait for warmer weather before stimulating Flathead sounds credible.

I note though that although we have excellent gas composition results for Flathead, I think all we’ve been told about the reservoir itself is that the porosity is ‘good’. My understanding is that given the fairly uniform, rounded grains making up a pure quartzite such as Flathead, porosity and permeability should be fairly strongly correlated, i.e. if we have good porosity we should also have good permeability, but that still leaves the question of gas pressures. The decision was made not to drill Flathead to total depth after all and BS and DM generally deal in superlatives so ‘good’ could potentially mean something a little less good than would normally be understood, but between Flathead and Charles I would have thought the odds are in our favour that at least one comes good.

Only of interest to other AJ Bell users, but having just contacted AJ Bell to ask why I can't seem to get a live quote or set a limit order to top up my MDH holding I was told that '...we are only taking orders over the phone for the time being' due to '...heightened risk surrounding Aquis stocks on Access'.

I'm having the opposite problem on AJBell: can't get a quote online to buy even just a small amount. Is this just me/AJBell??

Sorry Ihavenoclue, you beat me to it!

DM: '...we might just have to start paying a 5-10p dividend per year'

Like you I remain optimistic about our chances overall Tiburn, but I would however query your interpretation of the following statements from recent RNSs:

"Despite good porosity readings on wireline, gas from the Flathead does not flow naturally and additional stimulation could be required to generate commercial flow rates, a process which is relatively common and cost-effective in the region”

Unless there’s a realistic chance that Flathead could spontaneously start flowing by itself then ‘additional stimulation could be required to generate commercial flows’ implies to me a second round of more intensive stimulation, for example fracking following an initial acid wash.

“The results are contrasting to the 2.5% helium identified in the underlying Flathead formation, the primary target in the Clink #1 well, implying an excellent seal that is potentially containing the high-grade helium system beneath the Amsden, and that gas in the Amsden has migrated from a different source.”

My reading of this is that HEX believe the seal over Flathead may have prevented helium migrating upwards to Amsden in significant volumes, in which case whatever gas exists in the Charles, though presumably exhibiting slightly higher helium concentrations being lower in the stratigraphic column, would be expected to otherwise resemble the gas in Amsden. In short, commerciality at Clink probably depends on being able to at the very least coax some consistent low pressure flow from Flathead.

So you made that up then GoldWish?? Another one to filter.

If I remember correctly Rudyard was given a COS of 0.73 with trap and seal identified as the principle risk.

Sorry, 'respectively' not 'retrospectively'

Hi Ezhik, hi Tiburn

Not sure if either of you will see this, but I was just wondering if I could pick your brains regarding the mud cake please?

Firstly, DM mentioned in one of his interviews that the mud weight used was 11 pounds per gallon which he described as ‘very heavy'. I know these are American units but does that mud weight sound particularly remarkable to you? I think 11ppg corresponds to a specific gravity of 1.32 if that’s any help.

Also, converting the mud weight in ppg to psi/ft then multiplying by the approximate depths in feet of the Amsden, Charles and Flathead formations (roughly 3900, 5000 and 7900), gives me hydrostatic pressures in psi of 2230.8, 2860 and 4518.8 retrospectively. These figures don’t mean a lot to me but given that hydrostatic pressure, i.e. the pressure of the drilling fluids against the walls of the well bore, evidently increases quite rapidly with depth could this be sufficient explanation on its own for why Charles and Flathead have both apparently ended up clogged but Amsden flowed much as it did in the 1940s or am I looking for excuses?

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY7q3Ax5_aY

That’s true Pompey, but remember that the Ryder Scott report also stated that the ‘…Charles reservoir quality appears to be somewhat heterogenous’ with ‘…better quality reservoir rock at the crest of the structure’. DM moreover in his interview yesterday said that the Charles formation had the ‘…best reservoir properties of any of the rocks we’ve seen’.

Personally I’m optimistic that Charles will flow but whether the He concentration will be significantly different from the Amsden formation immediately above is anyone’s guess. One very significant point in our favour however is that if Amsden at just 0.13% He could theoretically generate enough income to pay for the well in two years and the plant in 5, then the bar Charles would need to clear to make Clink commercial is now tantalisingly low. If flows were to prove similar to Amsden for example, a concentration of just 0.27% would equate to annual income per well of 3 million (alongside Amsden) which I presume would be enough to render Clink commercial.