We would love to hear your thoughts about our site and services, please take our survey here.
@Skittish
I agree with your cash assessment, I did some estimates of my own which assumed they might have tightened the G&A + Salary budget while 'in limbo' so to speak. I came to a figure of around $6.5-7m - very similar to yours. I do however think a raise might be on the cards, subject to share price movement in relation to the upcoming drill news. I have seen people on the board saying they think the company won't be able to facilitate a raise, I looked into this and contacted a friend within that side of the industry, he outlined to me that these claims are false (if I'm honest I wouldn't be able to repeat and explain the reasons why - this is outside my area of knowledge to fully understand).
I disagree with the one well theory - I think it will be two. One testing the deep karoo play and one testing the untested lake bed closure play. I believe it has been stated they will drill to 1300m which means they must be drilling the northern extension of Tai, and not the original Tai site. Having looked at the 6 new northern targets, there doesn't appear to be a cross-straigraphic group stacked target (just the proposed stacked lake bed closure) at any of these northern extension sites, and therefore are (in my opinion) likely to be running two drills. in regards to time given the rough rig parameters, it should be possible to drill down 1300m in ~2 weeks, test in 1 week and then move onto the lakebed play very quickly.
@dai
We won’t be buying a rig and ancillaries - far too expensive for us I am sure.
@MRBENSON
I am involved in the environmental/ESG side of mining, across a few projects.I also have geo credits at UG level along with a very keen interest for the subject still!
Yes, as makes sense? It may be easier if you state exactly what you're trying to imply instead of being so cryptic and maybe I can help you to understand further?
Running testing of O&G rig is very commonplace following the demobilisation from another project. It is my belief that the rig has become available recently (within the last 3 months or so) and therefore requires this testing before being shipped out to the outbacks of Tanzania, as also explained by David in the recent directors interview. It isn't a test to see if it's tough enough for the job, think of it more as a getting a service for your car before taking it abroad. Furthermore, it likely isn't damage as in someone has pulled something off of it, but more a test for wear and tear where the onus falls upon the provider.
In regards to for your Tai2 comment: It's not luck, it's the summation of multiple highly educated, seasoned geologists and engineers interpreting the geological data they had, in order to identify the confluence of structures they believe hold trapping/seal potential.
As a point of clarification, I believe you are refer to the helium gas show within the red sandstone and are questioning why they didn't go that far on Tai2. Tai2 didn't sit upon a suitable trap and seal, so they wouldn't have expected to have found a helium show within the sandstone group at this site.
@Dai
In regards to Tai2, I believe they were doing both. They were testing the prospectivity of the lake bed formation as well as the localised clay dissemination (through wireline logging) as a proxy for understanding basin-wide seal and trapping potential of what is now known as the 'shallow targets'.
I am unsure what you are getting at with the second part of your post, but I will try answer it how I understand you comment. If you could elaborate about what extra data you think they were collecting, that would be interesting.
I believe the 8 day delay is likely accounted for by three main factors:
1. Unspecified uncertainty - given the evident unsuitability of the rig, they needed to come up with a plan on the fly.
2. Moving the drill rig
3. Pre-spud drill testing/ensuring the wireline tools were still functional (as is standard)
The reason they thought they had hit the big time was because they identified multiple helium shows across multiple distinct stratigraphic layers (a strong indicator that source rock and migration was no longer a risk). On top of this they noticed bubbling within the drilling mud, alongside helium shows on gas chromatography, which combined provides near certain qualitative proof of free-helium.
The target was always the Karoo as they had reason to believe (based on the geo work) that there was a claystone unit that may act as a seal (which they further went on to prove as the 130m thick layer). Therefore it makes sense they would want to go further down to the target site.
As for 'Not everything gets stuck on ledges..' - This comment has confused me, because this is exactly what happened with the wireline and accounts for why they couldn't test the 5 deeper karoo shows.
@Dai - What is missing from the story?
They didn't drill deeper for Tai2 because Tai2 was never designed to be a Karoo testing drill. They realised they didn't have the right drill to test an unconsolidated reservoir so they used Tai2 to get more detail on the stratigraphy at Tai (looking at clay sealing) and to test the shallow plays that hadn't been fully tested at Tai1. This also acted as a way to save money, as they were paying by the meter and not by the drill. This was all stated in the varying Tai2-associated RNSs at the time.
What went wrong last year was that they thought the reservoir was going to be well-consolidated with low porosity based on the two previous holes from the 80/90s (I forget exact date) on top of the limited 2D seismic - the reservoir ended up being better quality than they expected which was unconsolidated with higher porosity - this meant the higher pressure caused by a narrower drill bit on a narrow rod (mineral rig) caused significant formation damage down the hole (washouts + compacted mud into the reservoir caused by high pressure). In turn this formation damage causes traps and snags which prevents the wireline tool from easily moving down the hole. From what I remember they kept getting the wireline tool snagged on the washout-formed ledges and had to ‘fish’ (aka go down and free the line or sonde) from these ledges. The problem with this is that if the wireline tool gets stuck and you can’t fish it out, you’re looking at 1. A costly expense to repay whoever you borrowed it from for their time + lost earning + new tools and 2. Environmental blowback (both legislatively and economically) of leaving a wireline tool in the ground and having causing irresponsible damage to the land you’ve leased.
The big takeaway is that they qualitatively ‘found’ helium but they couldn’t quantifiably prove that it was there using the wireline tool (A true helium discovery + flowing it to surface) as they couldn’t get the probing tool down to the karoo level.
What’s different this time is that they know the reservoir parameters and can plan accordingly. Using a conventional drill (with a wider bit but same rod) there is much wider annulus and lower pressure across the bit, in turn this will produce a much ‘cleaner’ drill hole with higher integrity (e.g no washouts and invasion of mud into the surrounding formation).
To sum it up, we have already ‘found’ helium, the main problem is that we couldn’t get the wireline tool down to test it. Using a conventional drill rig, we will have a much cleaner hole and therefore be much more likely to be able to smoothly run the wireline tool down the hole without it getting caught.
Not financial advice. DYOR.
More than welcome.
IMO this all means (assuming no repairs needed): rig passes checks ~6-10th June, rig signed by ~17th June, rig/wireline/crew mob underway ~1st July, touchdown and spud ~1st september followed by 2 weeks drill + 1 week testing. I hope for results from first rig before or around start of October. This gives time to run a second drill before December rains turn up with over a month of leeway for delays.
https://www.***************************/why-helium-one-global-is-focusing-on-tia-video/4121066371
Will be available at 10am. Lets hope its good!