What Lorna said6 Nov 2025 02:03
Question Lorna's Answer Video Timestamp
How have you found the last couple of days [of the conference] and what have you found most interesting? It's a pleasure to be back here. It's a fantastic city, first time to Austin. This is my fourth Helium Summit. The first one back in 2021, Helium One was a very different company: we hadn't drilled a well, we were working with a sub-optimal rig in deepest, darkest, remote Africa. Now, after just four years, we've successfully drilled three wells, got a discovery under our belt, advanced to a mining license in Tanzania—the first of its kind—and diversified the portfolio by acquiring a stake in the Blue Star Helium project in Colorado, US. All within a relatively short space of time, while being a public company, always cash constrained. I'm here in Austin with a different, fantastic mindset, and I'm delighted to be back. -
What is your elevator pitch for Helium One in 2025—how does your approach to helium exploration differ from traditional pathways? We are the primary helium explorer in Tanzania, which has been our primary focus for 10 years. Executing projects in Africa is cumbersome, difficult, slow, and requires patience and resilience. We've worked exceptionally hard to make up for lost time and are on the cusp of development and production. However, it is costly and comes with logistical challenges. We decided to diversify the portfolio and spread the risk, farming into 50% equity of the Blue Star project here in the US, which will be coming on stream at the end of this year for helium and CO2. We now have two very different projects across two continents. Logistics in Tanzania is six to nine months of planning, whereas in Colorado, preparing a pad is a matter of days. In Colorado, we have free gas, but in Tanzania, we've got helium in solution, which comes with challenges we're learning as we go—I don't believe there are any helium in solution projects in production globally. -
What needs to happen for you to be seen in that producer bracket, and how do you de-risk and build confidence in the marketplace? Ultimately, we all want to be in production and generating cash flow as quickly as possible. The project in Tanzania has been a long time coming. We will be doing further testing later this year to move up into the all-important reserves bracket, and look at debt and project financing. For all of those things to fall into place, you've got to prove what you've got in the ground and the ultimate value of the project, which is challenging in the exploration phase. Diversifying into the US project with near-term production and revenue was another reason to demonstrate potential. Exploration is important because notwithstanding the end of the previous shortage, at some point in the future, there will be another shortage, and we need to still be feeding that exploration funnel of new frontiers. -
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