Member Info for KeithOz

QS - you seem to have a remarkable lack of understanding about the second Tai drill. They wanted to hit the shallow target that had already been penetrated on the way down, but needed a fresh borehole. So you drill close to the original hole. But I guess you knew that already. From your posting history, it seems that you are positive when you are holding stock, and then negative when you want to buy some. Do you really believe that your posts are so influential that you will move the sp? Is the 10% you may or may not skim really worth the effort?

Actually I think 100M in a day is pushing it. PG plus about 10 regulars on this board hold about 100M in total, by my estimates. They will not be selling out for a quick 10%. After the huge turnover in July, I would not be surprised if a similar number are held by Russian and Moroccan interests, and they are not after profit, they are after control of gas. So that only leaves another 100M. I don't see all of them moving in a day.
In case anyone new to this board is going to claim that because I have made a post supportive of PRD, I must be the same person as GRH and MEM, I would like t o point out that I had to Google to find out what a flatcoat is (sorry, Graham) and I have never flown a plane.
A Happy & Prosperous New Year to holders, skimmers, rampers & dumpers alike - Keith

I'm not aware that anyone has used ERT to locate gas - not saying it doesn't work, but it's an unknown. I'm also not aware that anyone has used seismic at such shallow depths, but that's because no one looks for such shallow traps for natural gas - the low pressure would make it uneconomic. However, He is worth 2-300 times natural gas, so even a small low pressure reservoir may be of economic value. In short, if seismic works, little point in spending more time & money on another technique, unless you want to cross-validate results, and you can afford to do so, time and cash-wise.

Agree it will be a lot more than 30 days, they are still in the dewatering / clean up phase, hence not even an initial flow rate has been given. So much for Joel Riddle's promise for flow data this year. The market is not impressed - after opening over 8% up, sp has dropped to a shade over yesterday's close. I will wait for what Santos has to say, which will probably be towards the end of February.

No1P, Nas-K. You seem to know a lot about drilling, so why don't you form a UK team if the Australians are so thick? You could make a huge amount of money from being the first to do horizontal sidetracks from NQ diamond drilling, particularly since you must have worked out a solution for bringing up core round corners from a kilometre down. Why don't you call up Mitchell Drilling (+71 7 3716 7577) and discuss your proposed technical soltutions, I'm sure they'd love to hear your innovative proposals. Just don't tell them I recommended you, I'd like you to retain all the credit, after all, it's your idea.

Ody - there are lots of potential reservoirs, not just one big one. You really need to read up on this before investing. Start with the CPR
https://www.helium-one.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/259989-Project-Apollo-CLN-reduced-memory-Final-13.11.20.pdf
Then go through the various interviews and RNSs.

...and a further point to add to our Princess's post:

7. If you look at the table on p.102 of the CPR, SRK has assumed a He concentration of a shade over 4%. There is a good chance that it could be double that, especially in the anticipated new deeper targets. I'll shut up now, before I'm accused of ramping.

I'm not sure why there is continuing debate over the timing of shallow drills. You can't drill unless you have a rig, and you don't sign a rig contract until you know you have something to drill. That's not HE1 missing time deadlines, it's them being methodical and doing things correctly, rather than just willy-nilly to meet a deadline that is of importance to one or two PIs who don't seem to understand how the exploration process works. It says quite clearly in the last RNS that they are investigating shallow targets:

"The Company has also agreed with AGS to shoot a 15 km 'high resolution' line with 5 metre source and receiver spacing. This experimental line will test the suitability of high resolution seismic to resolve shallow structures and identify potential closures within the topmost 400 metres. The line, which crosses the Tai and Itumbula Highs, will provide valuable data in understanding stratigraphic and structural variation within the poorly resolved shallow and ultra-shallow zone. "

Happy now?

Legalwolf - yes I have been invested a long time, initially through Solo Oil, who had a stake in the then unlisted HE1, then in Attis Oil that HE1 reversed into before listing this time last year. I have read all the original research & PhD theses from Oxford & Durham, and geologically think that this is a massive opportunity, especially given the increasing demand for He. My concerns have always focussed on the practicalities of extracting the resource from such a remote and under-explored location. These positives and negatives were both underlined by the drilling campaign - a working He system, charged reservoirs, and effective seal were all confirmed imho, but so also were the major engineering challenges.
I hope that the management have learned from this - one concern has been the lack of O & G expertise on the team, now rectified. I have posted here before my detailed concerns about the viability of shallow traps, but believe there will be plenty of deep, commercial helium to be found - it's just a matter of using proven gas methodology, not that used for mineral exploration & extraction. Despite DM's soothing words to the contrary, I think that a deep 3-borehole campaign with a real O & G rig will cost more than they have in cash reserves, so unless a shares for drilling deal is arranged as per last time with Mitchells, a modest capital raise may be required - this is likely to come at the same time as an announcement of exciting new targets. With a market cap north of £40M, I don't see a raise of £5M being fatal, although it could cause a short term price drop, hence my cautious top-up strategy.
Anticipating a 6-12 month hiatus, I sold down some of my HE1 holding, and put this into an ASX-listed He company Blue Star Helium (BNL). They are drilling next month in Colorado, where a nearby water well has been bubbling 8.8% He. My strategy is to sell this down in stages over the next few months (hopefully as BNL share price increases), and dribble this back into HE1.
In summary, reduced risk geologically, still high risk operationally, but huge potential upside. I assume from your username that you do not consider yourself in the 'widows & orphans' category of investor :-)

Geowiz - if you can't see the evidence within the large amount of detailed information, including actual logs, released to the market, also confirmed by a world-class outfit like NuTech, then clearly the username you hide behind is singularly inappropriate.

Legalwolf - like that other company in which we share an interest, there is huge potential here, but also the risk of a volatile share price driven by news or lack of it. May I suggest an investment strategy where you decide how much you want to invest in HE1 in total, then put in 20% of that, at whatever the share price happens to be, each month from January to May? You will then be fully invested before deep drilling starts, but avoid the risk of all your investment getting shat upon by for example a capital raise in February. I think this used to be called cost averaging.
I have addressed the issue of shallow drilling a few minutes ago, in another post that I mistakenly attached to the wrong thread!

Shallow drilling.

There is no mention of when or even if shallow drilling will start, because to do so they first need to identify shallow drill targets. In order to do that, you have see if the exploration techniques you are using are coming up with encouraging results. My take from the RNS is that they are trying modified seismic to see if that shows anything interesting. I've not heard of this being done before, will be interested in the results. In earlier interviews there was mention of other possible exploration techniques, interestingly there was no mention of these in today's RNS. Have they tried and failed, or just decided they will not work?

Deep drilling.

Before you agree a rig contract, you need to know how many prospects you are drilling, and to what depth. In a recent Proactive video, Lorna Blaise confirmed that Tai was to be re-drilled. From what I can deduce, the new potential targets are likely to be part of the Tai structure, but further north and considerably deeper. Deeper = higher pressure = more He. Once they have agreed the best two or three prospects from the current seismic work, they can calculate total depth and start negotiations. Drills contracts are very often priced per metre, if they are doing another part cash/part shares deal that could take a little longer to agree since the drilling company will want to see the seismic and provide their input, since compensation will be partially results-based.

Hi Layla, sorry, off-topic for everyone else!
I am aware that EUA early holders have done very well, and I'm pleased for you that you are one of those. I don't have any specific observations on that company that may be of help. It is just my personal experience of how things are done in Russia, shared by many western business people, leads me to avoid anything there as a potential investment opportunity. I am unwilling to share horror stories on a public board where I can easily be identified, but there are many, the large ones mostly involving expropriation of assets. The day to day hassles revolve around individuals in petty positions of power inventing obstacles for you to overcome, most easily done by a suitable payment. I guess if you have a lot of Rhodium at $14,000 / oz, the necessary packages can be small enough to be discretely exchanged.

Helium One Global (AIM: HE1), the primary helium explorer, is pleased to update the market on progress of its Phase II 2D Seismic Campaign at Rukwa (100%) project.

On 16 November, Helium One commenced data acquisition of its 200 line kilometre Phase II 2D Seismic Campaign at Rukwa. The campaign is ongoing with the late arrival of rains to Rukwa resulting in excellent ground conditions for data acquisition.

As of 18 December, the company has completed 188.5 line kilometres, or 94% of the originally planned 200 line kilometer survey. Following encouraging early results, the Company has decided to extend the survey with an additional 20 line kilometres of 2D Seismic to secure additional data over promising targets within the previously unsurveyed Momba area.

The Company has also agreed with AGS to shoot a 15 km 'high resolution' line with 5 metre source and receiver spacing. This experimental line will test the suitability of high resolution seismic to resolve shallow structures and identify potential closures within the topmost 400 metres. The line, which crosses the Tai and Itumbula Highs, will provide valuable data in understanding stratigraphic and structural variation within the poorly resolved shallow and ultra-shallow zone.

Trading Update

Helium One remains well funded for current exploration activities. The Company is confident about its Phase II exploration campaign and is in negotiation with a number of rig contractors for mobilisation of a conventional rig to target commencement of drilling in Q3 2022. After payment of all due invoices related to Phase I drilling, cash reserves available for Phase II exploration as of 31st October 2021 stand at USD $11,506,914.75 (GBP £8.7 million) with liabilities excluding disputed invoices of USD $239,429.21 (GBP £0.18 million).
David Minchin, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"We are delighted with progress at our extended Phase Il 2D seismic campaign, which has provided high-quality data across the northern extensions of Tai and Itumbula structural highs that are believed to be acting as a charge focus for helium migration. Based on encouraging early results, the seismic campaign was expanded with an additional 20 line kilometres of acquisition over newly identified leads.

"I would like to thank the community in Rukwa and all of our field staff for their hard work and dedication in delivering a safe and successful project to date. A seismic survey is a huge undertaking and many of the team currently on site will be spending Christmas in the field working on additional line kilometres and the high resolution line over the Tai and Itumbula structural highs.

"We remain well financed and look forward to updating the market with additional information developed from the Phase II 2D seismic campaign once data has been processed and interpreted. This information will feed into generating additional targets for our 2022 conventional drilling campaign."

If you want to know how to build a mine in a remote location, you might find this documentary interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrAVuOOlW5Y&ab_channel=Spark

It's almost an hour long, but documents the discovery and building of the largest Copper mine in the world - Grasberg Mine in New Guinea. KAV won't have to deal with razor-edged mountains, freezing fog and headhunters (I assume!) but the Kalahari Desert will not be without its challenges (no water, for a start).

Legalwolf asked yesterday about which minerals would be most attractive to potential partners. That's a big subject on which there will be many different views, so it seems sensible to start a new thread.

Let me kick off with my business development hat on. The first thing a potential partner will ask is - where is it? The answer for the KSZ is of course SW Botswana. Now Botswana is good for several reasons - it has a stable government, a good legal system, transparent decision making, low corruption compared to most countries in Africa, and a long history of a good working relationship with a vibrant mining industry. Then there's the downside - take a look at this map:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Botswanas-infrastructure-networks-align-with-population-density_fig3_228304259

You know where the KSZ is, you will immediately see that if you want roads, railways, electricity, gas, water, and air access (or most likely all of those things) you will need to build it yourself and fly the people in and out. To keep shipping costs down, It will be necessary to process and and at least concentrate ore on site. You will then need to work out how to transport it to markets - presumably via Namibia for USA & Europe, or via S. Africa (I don't recommend Zimbabwe!) for the Chinese market.

The conclusion is that doing anything for the KSZ is going to cost BIG money, so it will be worthwhile only if it is a world class (Tier 1) project. That means potential partners will be from the top 10 outfits worldwide. If KAV finds half a dozen CuNiPGE orebodies half a km long or more, they will come flocking. The PGE provides half the cash from Noril'sk-Talnakh, but it is Ni or Cu that will get the majors interested - both these commodities are going to see increasing demand due to the electrification rollout, and there are few big undeveloped deposits left.

For Nickel, there is plenty of laterite in Indonesia, Philippines & Solomons, but laterite is expensive and eco-unfriendly to process, and these jurisdictions have proven to be problematic of late. What the majors want is a BIG Ni sulphide deposit -this is cheaper and more eco-friendly, but the only potential Tier 1 available is Amur Minerals Kun-Manie deposit in Russia. Having spent two miserable years in Russia trying to develop a (non-mining) project for a major multinational, I would recommend that no one ever invests as much as a bent halfpenny in that kleptocracy.

Copper - likewise. - Solgold's Cascabel project in Ecuador is (I think) the largest Cu deposit not yet controlled by a major. I sold my holding in SOLG early this year when I realised they were going to need to block cave mine at a depth of 1.5km - never been done, will be difficult & expensive.

Gold - if we really do have a 30km long IOCG that will attract interest from the likes of Newmont. If small, less interest - lots of small producers, overdue for consolidation, why buy a small non-producing asset?

Good morning RFJ & welcome to the board. Valuing an orebody in the ground is the easy bit. You need to know:

*Dimensions of orebody - from RNS. calculate the cubic metres. You now have the volume.
*Weight of orebody - multiply by the rock density - here's a clue, it will be about x3 :-)
*Metal content - from RNS. This will be expressed as eg. 1% Ni, 1% Cu, 1 g/tonne Pd
*Divide the orebody weight by the percentages and g/t to get (metric) weights of metal content.
*Look up metal prices at https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/futures/metals or your chosen info source.
*Non-precious metals are already quoted in USD/metric tonne. Precious metals are annoyingly quoted in USD/ounce, so you will need to divide that by 28.35 to get to USD/g.
*Multiply the weights by the $ values, then convert to your chosen currency using https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=GBP&view=1D or your preferred FX website.

Now the hard bit. Remember that the theoretical value of resources in the ground will be way more than the market value, since you have the cost, time and effort to dig them up. You will need to make a lot of cost assumptions, then drop these into an accounting spreadsheet to get the NPV (net present value). The perceived market value will then be based on the NPV, which will typically be discounted to reflect the chances of success of a particular project. That requires quite a lot of time and effort. When/if we get some indications of what is underground. I will process all this info and post it here.

Interesting data on Russian gas flow into Europe (basically it's stopped today):
https://twitter.com/biancoresearch/status/1472649104148905987

Legalwolf - Yes & No! Yes - if the conductor is massive sulphides, one hole straight through the middle will almost certainly reveal that to be the case. No - it may not be representative of mineralisation throughout the body, which may vary considerably from one end to the other, or from the centre to the external zones. For this reason, multiple drillholes will be necessary to delineate a resource.
To delineate an internationally recognised resource, for example to Australian JORC or Canadian NI-43-101 standards, you would need to drill holes on a grid typically 50m apart - maybe more or less depending upon the consistency or otherwise of the mineralisation. So for B1, this could range from 50 - 100 boreholes, depending on angle of entry, etc. Of course this is numbingly expensive, hence the need for a partner with deep pockets.

MH - you're quite correct. Pyrite can occur as the result of sulphidation of magnetite, which will increase conductance. There should be more than a good chance that Cu & Ni sulphides are also present, 7% would do nicely, but unfortunately more likely to be 1-2%. Now I think it is a good idea to close down the speculative parts of our brains until late January!