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@dai2belts
Good observations!
I had to wade through a lot of banter before finding your post - almost missed it today!
On the dip line section, if you look above the shallowest shaded blue target, you'll see a prominent thin black line at about 0.6s. The black corresponds to a strong negative trough (low impedance contrast), and could be interpreted as a layer of bentonite. The area within the shallow target all looks faded, which I find quite curious, as if the impedance/velocity has been lowered by the presence of gas.
The lower target has more prominent events just below the yellow line, but these events are red - black - red, which show a strong positive acoustic contrast and I would regard them as more likely to be an interbedded sequence of sandstone and shales. The Karoo sequence predates the onset of more recent volcanism, so I wouldn't expect to see bentonite there.
However this target also looks faded within the blue dotted line circle and quite a contrast with the same prominent event at 1.3s on the right side of the circle.
Neither targets look to be the effect of a scaling shadow, caused by trying to balance out the relative amplitudes of quiet and noisy layers - scaling shadows tend to be flat horizontal zones in time.
The trap locations are based on the tension component of strike-slip movement of the horst block causing the spectacular rollovers and closure, rather than the up-thrown shift in the layers along the fault lines.
It doesn't matter what is below the blue line, as that is likely to be heading into basement territory, and by then, so much helium will hopefully be found that they won't care what's there deeper down:-)
All IMHO & DYOR.
@dai2belts
It's good to have someone else looking at the data, and hopefully we learn more from DM's comments as a result of our collective efforts on this board!
I had a listen to the transcript and DM is talking about the subtle features of bright reflectance at 34.29. At 35.40 he is also referring to the light (meaning high contrast) areas in the red sandstone. The lower highlighted zone he identifies as the Karoo supergroup, and the zone between the red sandstone and lake bed sediments is harder to define, so the shallower target might be either.
Anyway, his main point is the vertical sequence on the strike line direction where the broad rollover structures caused by the strike-slip faulting have created 3 way closures all the way down, and that there might be many more sandstone and sealed reservoirs with effective seals present throughout. This makes it a 'must drill' as a single vertical well will hit every one of these targets.
The bright area he refers to are the zones of high acoustic impedance contrast, meaning the bright red/black lines between 0.3-1.1s, caused by low density, low velocity strata. He thinks these are possibly bentonitic volcanic ash zones which are very fine clay layers with low permeability and therefore make an excellent seal! That is good news for mitigating the risk of helium escaping from the trapped areas.
Also he mentioned the size of the closures on this prospect - 5km in one direction (dip) and 2-3km (strike). So potentially 15 sq km and not just 10 sq km.
To please @Scott22 and add some balance to the post, of course this is still a wildcat well in a new basin with no well-tie log data, and the questions remain: will the well discover helium and will it flow in commercial quantities?
The risk of missing the targets on 2D data and drilling through the fault walls is mitigated by the additional infill data.
DM, to his credit, has provided us with some analysis of the seismic data in his presentation and put forward the geological reasons for what he and his team believe to be a very good chance of success.
As always, these are my opinions and DYOR.
You're welcome dai2belts!
Thanks for the transcript copy/paste tip.
You probably deserved a beer or two after ploughing through all my comments last night:-)
Looking at the basement geology and the fact that helium seeps are 10% concentrations at Itumbula, I can't see why they would be any less at Tai.
In fact, with Kasuku, Miombo and Tai being closer to the rift valley wall and sources of helium liberation by hydrothermal fluids, you'd expect them to be at least the same concentration.
Add in the fact that the recovery factor of gas in the porous sandstone reservoirs is likely to be closer to 40% than 20% and that the drill might discover more sandstone units and of thicker sequence; then any cautious, pessimistic estimates tend to just get bigger and bigger as knowledge gets added and the field develops.
and the 2nd part....
So a question if you don't mind and whenever, no rush, will be here for a long time.
Looking at Strike, line 14, about 0.4s, those black and red lines are from the same deposits/time?
Yes, the black and red lines belong to the same strata i.e. same age.
Then at about 0.3s above the trap the missing lines are erosion rather than slipping down through movement into 0.4s?
The missing lines above 0.3s are due to the time gap from when the Red Sandstone group was tilted and then the lake bed sediments were laid down uniformly on top after the faulting and possibly some erosion of the Sandstone ceased.
One question really.
Looking again, I might be seeing lines pushing up, which makes the missing ones erosion?
There are the two fault lines causing a discontinuity in the strata. There isn't much downthrown movement in the strike direction, but on Line 13 dip line, the interpreter has pencilled in a large downthrown difference on the left/western side of the major strike/slip fault - see how the red/yellow/pale blue lines jump down a long way.
The other clue to depths is in the cartoon schematic of the geology on page 12, showing the base of the Red Sandstone formation at only 500m depth. The rift valley wall runs NW-SE and Tai is about the same distance from the basement walls as Kasuku and Miombo, so I would expect the same depths of lake bed sediments for Tai as shown in the map on page 11 for Kasuku & Miombo.
Itumbula is further out towards the centre of the basin with a markedly thicker sequence of overlying lake bed sediments.
The cartoon shows most of the blue shaded targets as within the top Karoo supergroup formation - Kasuku has 3 such zones.
So for me, and it is imho, that the strong red/black lines below 0.3-0.4s belong to the Red Sandstone Group and that the interpreter has illustrated the 2 targets in the upper and lower Karoo supergroup formation, one below the red line and one below the yellow line.
The cartoon doesn't show prospects at the top of the Red Sandstone formation, other than Kasuku & Itumbula.
The two targets at Tai are broad structural ones and not subtle stratigraphic ones, and they're not dependent on salt or seals in the lake bed sediments. Hopefully that's why they're termed 'must drill' targets!
dai2belts,
thanks for the questions!
I've just been reading the posts of the day and come across your comments, so will do my best to answer them!
Do you know why the seismic sections do not seem to show the length and width of the closure, to me both the strike and dip sections show similar size targets, but I dont know what the y-axis scale is?
Yes, both strike and dip sections show similar size targets, but i think the NW-SE trending Line 14 strike line is the direction with 5km closure and Line 13 dip line is shown the similar size but more likely to have the 2km closure in the SW-NE direction at right angles to the main faults.
The y-axis going down is two way travel time from 0 to 2500 milliseconds at the bottom.
The x-axis going along the top is distance, and the numbers annotated are shot point numbers, although they're plotted at a scale of 80 traces/km so they're all crammed in so you can't make out the numbers. No matter, the clue is in the scale bar in the yellow contour inset map.
Above the SP numbers on Line 14, you'll see some annotations with a vertical dash |
These correspond to the locations of the dip lines 09,10,11,12 & 13. The distance between dip lines 11 and 13 is 2500m, and on line 14 this spans half of the target area, so the full target area with the perfect dip closure is 5km.
Hi QuosimodosDream,
Thanks for pointing that out - you're right. I not very good with volumetrics, just wanting to understand how much helium is potentially there.
Sunday seismic thoughts - part 4 of 4:
Now for the fun part taking a wild stab at calculating the volumetric of Tai on the back of a beer mat!
Areal extent = 2 x 5km = 10sq km
Vertical depth = 230m+270m = 500m
Volume = 10000m x 10000m x 500m = 50 billion cu. m
Reduce by factors e.g. porosity 18%; recovery factor 20%, helium content 4%
50 billion cu. m x 0.18 x 0.2 x 0.04 = 72 million cu. m
Convert to mcf: 72 million x 0.0353 = 2.541 million mcf.
Value = 2.5416 million x $250/mcf after costs = $635m or £453m
So that's 4 times the m/c of £118 million for one well.
All the above 4 posts are just my own opinions based on a very limited snapshot of the data in a powerpoint presentation. We won't know for sure about anything until the formations are drilled next month, so anyone's guess is as good as mine! As always, DYOR.
Sunday seismic thoughts - part 3 of 4:
In the latest presentation by HE1, there was a comment on page 16 about Tai:
'Faulted 3-way dip closure concurrent with a gravity high'
I wanted to find out more about the use of gravity analysis as a geophysical technique here and to try to understand this comment better. It's been a long time since I did a gravity survey at university!
I purchased and read a scientific paper yesterday, which describes an area in NW Italy with helium and geothermal activity and very similar circumstances to the Rukwa valley.
Volcano–tectonic structures, gravity and helium in geothermal areas of Tuscany and Latium (Vulsini volcanic district), Italy - ScienceDirect: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375650599000140
In this location there is a rift valley graben, sedimentary basin, good carbonate reservoir rocks, NW-SE faulting and also, unusually, the ideal distance from volcanic activity to generate hydrothermal fluids at above 100C for releasing helium.
In Italy, radioactive decay of the source rocks has produced small amounts of helium which have been liberated by the hydrothermal fluids and have migrated through the strata and up fault walls that have reached the surface. Measuring helium in the soil over 1000 locations produced a positive helium anomaly centred on the location of the faults.
The big difference here is that the Italian source rocks are only 600 thousand years old whereas in the Rukwa valley, the Pre-Cambrian source rocks are up to 2600 million years old.
So in Rukwa there is an additional period of some 2 billion years for a large amount of helium to be generated from radioactive decay and released by relatively recent volcanism.
In Italy, the helium soil sample measurements were made in parts per billion, whereas in the Rukwa basin, helium seeps at Itumbula are up to 10 per cent where faults have reached the surface!
The high positive gravity anomalies in Italy matched the faulting patterns and the presence of potential sandstone reservoir rocks with higher densities of 2.5g/cc and carbonate sequences at 2.6g/cc. A low negative anomaly would have indicated the presence of low density rocks such as bentonitic volcanic ash for example.
So to return to the Tai prospect again, the gravity high associated with the faulted 3 way dip closure must refer to the trapping structure and helps to confirm the presence of thick sequences of sandstone reservoir rocks with densities around 2.5g/cc in both the upper Red Sandstone and Karoo supergroup formations.
Again, nothing definite, but another attribute that points to something encouraging!
Sunday seismic thoughts - part 2 of 4:
The Tai prospect didn't feature much on the old legacy data. However, advances in data processing techniques, computer power and processing algorithms have greatly enhanced this prospect on the reprocessed data.
In the mid '80s noise filtering and data scaling techniques could be pretty brutal and a lot of assumptions were needed in the final processing stages.
Crucially, the re-processed data would have preserved the true amplitude characteristics of the data, so it's now possible to see subtle changes in the displays.
The amplitude of the red/black/white reflected signals are displayed as acoustic impedance, which is density multiplied by velocity of sound in the rock.
So harder rock layers like sandstone and limestone will have higher impedance values since they're more dense and the speed of sound through the rock is also faster. Less dense rocks like fine shales and mudstones will have lower values.
Let's look at the blue highlighted areas again. The dark blue dotted line seems to show a boundary between events outside, which have a stronger signal and events inside, which appear to be noticeably dimmer in amplitude. The reservoir rock between the two major faults is continuous, so the density hasn't changed, but the impedance values have dropped indicating that perhaps the velocity of sound in the highlighted zones has reduced. If hydrocarbon gas is present in a reservoir, then commonly the velocity is reduced, so this could indicate the presence of gas in both zones.
Looking above the two blue circles, the amplitudes look normal. There doesn't appear to be any gas escape structures or discontinuities in the overlying strata, so if gas is present in the reservoir zone, then there's no evidence of the sealing of the trap failing.
The two highlighted prospects span a vertical two way travel time of approx. 0.2 seconds each, from 0.6-0.8 seconds and 1.1-1.3 seconds. At a rough guess, the velocity of sound through the Red Sandstone formation would be in the order of 2200-2400 meters/sec and the velocity of the sands in the Karoo formation a bit higher, say, 2600-2800 meters/sec.
So the actual depths of the reservoir zones highlighted should be in the order of 230m and 270m respectively.
Sunday seismic thoughts - part 1 of 4:
I promised to have another look at the seismic data in the latest HE1 6th May presentation and post some further thoughts. No matter if you're a geologist, geophysicist, investor, day trader or simply like gambling on the wife's pension fund, the recent decision to switch to the Tai prospect means that next month our investment decision hangs on the information provided in this presentation and a couple of seismic displays. There's not too many comments about it, and really the Tai prospect/lead has gone from a tiny blip on the Prospect map on page 11 to a 'must drill' location, but it is possible to glean some more information out of the seismic data.
I'm happy to share my thoughts if it helps others to understand what they're looking at, but bear in mind it's only a snapshot of limited data, and I'm not privy to the library of 2D data, well log data, geological and seismic interpretations or gravity data that the company has.
In order to explain the basics for those who don't profess to know much about seismic theory, I'll avoid using technical terms or too much detail.
Take a look at the seismic displays on page 16. The red, black and white background data represent the rock strata with red indicating strong positive reflected signals, black indicating strong negative reflections and white being neither strongly positive or negative.
The interpreter has drawn 3 lines - red for the top of the Red Sandstone formation, yellow for the top of the Karoo supergroup formation, and pale blue for the base of the Karoo formation.
The dark blue dotted lines indicate the stacked targets in the reservoir rocks shaded in blue inside.
Energy released by the vibrating pad of a vibroseis truck gets transmitted down through the earth and reflected back off each rock interface where there's a change in density or the speed of sound in the rock. The reflections are tiny and recorded by sensitive receivers on cables on the ground. The earth acts like a big sponge and most of the energy is absorbed, so the reflections from deeper events have to be amplified a lot to be visible on the displays.
A lot of geophysics goes into getting rid of unwanted signal and enhancing real events.
SeagullsFan & highlandmatt,
The technical risks with drilling might include loose, poorly sorted sediments and/or water content causing borehole instability issues, overpressured shales, an unusually high pressure regime, cementation issues, the risk of wireline tools getting stuck or failing to do a flow test.
I don't really see any of those being a problem here, given the geology at Tai.
The risks for me would be inadvertently drilling through the fault wall or drilling in the wrong place and missing the optimum location in the reservoir due to basing the decision on 2D data.
Look at 88e in Alaska last month - they had to drill 600 feet lower than they expected before encountering the reservoir rocks, went through a fault wall and failed to flow test. That is the difference between patchy 2D data and finely spaced 3D seismic.
I think the additional 2D infill survey carried out will be sufficient to avoid the same problem here.
Another issue raised has been the presence of adequate seals to trap the helium. I'll post some more analysis over the weekend that hopefully will reassure you and others about the seismic evidence available to us.
Mr SpaceTomato,
Don't let this poster get away with an unsubstantiated notion of corruption - the implications can be very serious.
I've been working offshore Africa for a very long time - Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Gabon, Angola, Namibia, S.Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar - and been in Arusha,Tanzania as well.
For the past 10-12 years at least, all oil companies have strict anti-corruption policies developed that have to be adhered to.
All customs officers and officials seeking any kind of benefit have it gently but firmly explained that companies cannot indulge them, and nowadays it has been reluctantly accepted.
Maximum 'gift' allowed is up to 50 dollars or maybe a carton of cigarettes.
Of course it happens on a large scale at government level, especially in Angola, but if any oil company was found to have engaged in making a bribe, the consequences would be immediate loss of the operating license.
The same would apply to HE1, and they have a CEO in DM that has just spent 3 months living with his family in-country and has built up a network of contacts that allow the company to carry out their business to the highest of standards.
Later on, when I get a chance, I'll post some more thoughts and analysis on the seismic data for Tai and glad that you and others have appreciated the input.
Thanks for the welcoming comments to this board!
I've spent the past 30 years working offshore on seismic boats doing geophysical QC for 3D & 4D surveys.
On Thursday afternoon I was flying to the Shetland Isles and missed the presentation, so was grateful to other posters who chipped in with updates.
If any seismic info comes our way in the course of the drills then I'll be happy to contribute to the discussions!
I'll try to answer Dai2belt's question about the faults not reaching the surface...
There's 2 seismic sections in the presentation: Line 13 dip line and Line 14 strike line.
The vertical scale is two way travel time(TWT) in milliseconds(ms).
Between 300-400ms TWT, you can see a strong reflector subject to the strike/slip faulting with high acoustic impedance across the whole section. On the left part of Line 14 strike line the shallow sediments above this reflector onlap unconformably onto it. Also on the right hand part of Line 13 dip line, there is also a visible unconformity.
So this means there is a bit of a time gap between the strata below the strong event (which were subject to the two strike/slip faults) and the rest of the younger sediments deposited afterwards on top.
To convert two way time into depth, multiply the seismic velocity by time in seconds and divide by 2.
Given that the velocity of the very shallow lake bed sediments at the top will be in the range of 1500-1800 metres per second, then 400ms on the vertical scale translates to 1800 x 0.4 x 0.5 = 320m.
It's interesting that the two highlighted areas of interest shaded in blue don't have the strong positive amplitude anomalies associated with hydrocarbon gas in a liquid state but rather are noticeably dimmer than the surrounding seismic data. So this could indicate the presence of helium in gaseous form coupled with the gravity anomaly mentioned.
Another difference with drilling for helium is that we are likely to get updates of helium shows during drilling, unlike drilling for hydrocarbons when the first update wouldn't be until the LWD results after reaching TD. So the notion of having to wait 4 weeks after spud for results at the end of June might not be the case, and for anyone thinking of investing after the spud date it would be advisable not to hesitate for too long, otherwise they might find themselves very quickly being left behind!
Mr SpaceTomato was asking recently if there were any geologists invested here. Well I'm a geophysicist and I invested after reading through the AIM admissions doc. I topped up again on Friday morning when the price dipped!
The potential here is tremendous with some truly unique and unusual circumstances...a rift valley with ancient Precambrian basement rocks and helium that has been generated in uplifted Paleoproterozoic era metamorphic rocks circa 1.6 - 2.5 billion years old. Also a huge amount of helium liberated by hydrothermal heat flow thanks to being just exactly the right distance from the nearest volcano to generate temperatures of 110c. A dynamic basin province with tilted fault blocks, excellent reservoirs, filled traps, migration paths and 8-11km of overlying basin filled sediment.
Until last week, my choice would have been to drill Kasuku first, because it has quite large stacked targets; tilted fault blocks with excellent sandstone reservoirs; closer to the rift wall where the helium generation is; less sediment overburden so less problems with well bore stability, and less complex post rift faulting. The larger reservoirs with less steep dips on the tilted fault blocks make it a bigger target for 2D imaging and a higher margin of error for the exact positioning of a vertical well, compared to say, Itumbula, with more steeply dipping target zones, where the well location would have to be spot on.
Kasuku also had sufficient sampling with infill data for 2D data, whereas Itumbula doesn't imo.
I can well imagine that there's a tremendous improvement in s/n ratios and data quality in the reprocessed data compared to the legacy mid '80s datasets.
So now it's all change with Tai being the 'must drill' prospect after the reprocessing results!
On the seismic data it looks like they're going for two even larger targets, one in the Permian Karoo formation and the other in the upper part of the Red Sandstone formation from Cretaceous to late Tertiary. Hopefully there's a good seal with fine grained shale lake bottom sediments.
The strike/slip faulting causes the target zones to rollover and create a flatter, larger reservoir with 3 way dip closure, rather than the syn-rift pull-apart faulting. Also the faults don't appear to extend to the surface, unlike at Itumbula, so there may well be further additional helium shows at very shallow depths too.
All subjective opinions of course, but these are my reasons for investing. Geology is an inexact science and the seismic data results as only as accurate as the assumptions being made about the earth model.
DYOR.
Well, if you were watching the shares traded a few minutes ago, there was a 700 code followed shortly afterwards by a 800 code. For the believers only!
1. 100 - I need Shares.
2. 200 - I need Shares badly but do not take the stock down.
3. 300 - Take (or I am taking) the stock down at least 30% so I can load shares.
4. 400 - Keep trading it sideways.
5. 500 - Gap the stock. Gap can be up or down, depending on direction of 500 signal.
6. 505 - I am short on shares
7. 600 - Apply resistance at the ASK to keep the price from increasing.
8. 700 - Move the price up.
9. 777 - Also recognized as a signal to move the price up.
10. 800 - Prepare for an increase in trading volume.
11. 900 - Allow the stock to float and trade freely.
12. 911 - Pending News/Press Release On The Way
13. 1000 - Don't let it run
14. 2100 - Let it run
For those worrying/wondering what to do today, it's well worth re-posting the comments of a petroleum geologist on reddit who has added his interpretation of the last operations update. As a geophysicist, I found them very helpful.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EEENF/comments/mgu9px/thanks_to_all_who_have_read_my_posts_here_are_the/
https://www.reddit.com/r/EEENF/comments/mfe7gj/thoughts_after_operations_update/
Perhaps his comments should be reposted during the day to calm the nerves!
"Update Details
The fact that the geological formation came in 600 feet low to prognosis is not a concern. The top depth was estimated from 2D seismic. They just had to drill deeper to find it - hence the delay (?). What is new and encouraging, IMO, is that the potential reservoir rocks gained substantial thickness. The original premise for the prospect was to find turbidite fan sandstones near the shelf edge. The only way the sediments could be thicker is find the sediments further towards the fan deposits slightly of the shelf edge and going downslope - i.e., a progressive sand build up. That creates an environment of greater sediment deposition and reduction of shales and clay -- SO a very very good thing.
The mention of oil shows were from the Hydrocarbon Mud-Logs. The description and images in the update are identical with to examples I posted as to description and evidence. The Bright White fluorescence seen in the images is indicative of a very high quality of crude oil, along the lines of 40-45 API gravity. The mention of background gas being and the the interval that recorded higher peaks is encouraging because it indicates low gas saturated oil vs. a gas only interval. The C5 gas component is Pentane, more common in oil.
Crude oil Fluoresces under Black Light UV. The bright white color is indicative of 40-45 gravity crude oil. The "cuts" by a solvent were very good. Encouraging as the presence of crude oil in the rocks.
The results, IMO, are directly inline with what I would hope to see in an Exploratory Wildcat well. The added 500 feet of potential reservoir rock is very encouraging because of the position in the depositional environment near a delta front. One thought is the the well is located proximal to the shelf edge where slumping downslope was penecontemporaneous with deposition - a trap for the sand which became sandstone. If commercial, the area is extended downdip as well as updip on a wide areal extent. SO -the report is very encouraging and actually better than expected from a geological point of view. It is best summarized by what is the last paragraph in the report: Until the wireline has been completed and interpreted, it will not be possible to define whether a discovery has been made. But - now they have an additional 500 feet of potential reservoir rock to evaluate. I CANNOT FIND ANY NEGATIVES IN THE 88 ENERGY REPORT - very encouraging == 500 feet of potential added reservoir."
I suspect the answer is related to what PI's like me and many others are doing this week.
On Friday I was fed up with BLOE and their lack of news, with the prospect of another month sitting waiting for flow results 'sometime during Q2' - while the BOD continues to hoover up cheap shares at rock bottom prices as part of their 40% in lieu of salary.
So I sold over half my stock in BLOE and put it into in 88e.
Bloody glad I did so as well - Monday's news sent it up 15%, another 25% yesterday and so far today 30% up again with the real results coming after Easter. Now got my funds back up closer to what they were when BLOE was 11p - in the space of 3 days! Think I'll keep holding as the seismic and lwd looks great.
So it wouldn't surprise me if others are doing likewise with their BLOE shares causing the downward pressure.
Jim,
You could well be right!
It does seem highly unusual to see some agreement between the parties in this case after all the delaying tactics, appeals etc in other cases.
Some new filings on the Harris County website now.
Surprisingly, SN agrees with Mourant Ozannes that the case should be reactivated and there seems to have been some correspondence between them and agreeing to procedures.
By agreement of the parties, Judgment Creditor Mourant Ozannes’ Motion to
Reactivate Case Status and Issue a Modified Docket Control Order is set for oral hearing on
April 7, 2021 at 10:30 a.m.
In another development yesterday, it appears that Cayman lawyers Mourant Ozannes have filed a motion to reactivate their case in Harris County against Zaza & Steve for monies owed.
Apparently the case wasn't active as it had been mistakenly filed as an action of a foreign state and not a foreign country.
So they have applied to reactivate case status and issue a modified docket control order.
A date for the hearing has been set for Monday 22nd March 2021 at 0800.