Helium One Global Ltd (LON:HE1) Chief Executive Officer David Minchin caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss 2021 achievements, the exploration programme, what investors should be looking out for in 2022 and where further growth will be coming from.
Q1: David, Helium One has announced full year results, can you just talk us through the last year, what you’ve achieved or delivered and why you’ve called it such a transformational year?
A1: It’s been an amazing roller coaster of a ride over the last twelve months or so. If you remember, I joined the company back in August of 2020 when we were a private company with large aspirations but no money and no team. Since then ,we have raised £6 million on IPO, we’ve then been able to raise £10 million and 3.5 times our admission price six months after we listed, we’ve conducted an aggressive exploration campaign including over 400 line kilometres of 2D seismic and our maiden exploration campaign which delivered exceptional value in bringing proof of concept.
We had technical issues with the hole which meant we weren’t able to test it but in demonstrating a working helium system with everything there; excellent quality reservoir, thick sealing units and multiple helium shows from basement practically all the way up to surface, we’ve come a long, long way.
As we’ve grown, so has the team of experts that sit behind me. We’ve got high quality rift basin geologists such as Lorna Blaisse, Mark Beeson, and Sam Girling joining the team recently as our Principal Geophysicist. Our operational crew has strengthened significantly with Colin Ivory, with over 45 years in the oil and gas industry, now heading up our operations as COO, Mike Williams as our Well Planning Engineer, Chris Eyre our new CFO.
We’ve transformed ourselves from a start-up with concept to being an operating exploration company who’s out there getting the job done.
Q2: Can you summarise the exploration programme from last year, what it means and what’s its actually showing you?
A2: We commenced in mid-February with a 2D seismic, we started off with 150 line kilometres and we added another 50 kilometres to that once we were in operation to bring it up to 200 line kilometres. That identified for us the Tai prospect, which is this beautiful robust three-way dip closure, it really stands out in the seismic as a must drill target so naturally, that was the one we went to and drilled when we commenced our exploration drilling in 2021 with the first slim line rig.
That showed multiple helium shows in mud, the first one coming less than a week after we started, only 70 metres deep with 2.2% helium gas in the mud. We were then able to announce further gas shows in the red sandstone where we really weren’t expecting to identify helium gas shows, that was a low order secondary target and it was beneath a quite thin intraformational claystone. As we got down into the top Karoo, we identified a very efficient seal which was 130 metres thick claystone at the top Karoo.
Helium is a very elusive gas, it tends to leak from things so to identify these big thick sealing units was a bonus for us and to identify the intraformational clays, have also got the capacity to be effective, is demonstrating that the helium can be trapped. We have a working system with reservoir and seal and the multiple helium shows.
We’ve all been over the technical issues we had towards the end of that hole with the washouts and the slim line design just not really helping us to eb able to perform an effective test. Unfortunately, we never were able to flow any gas to surface or even properly wireline the main reservoirs in Karoo which is a shame because that still remains our primary target and is untested.
We’ve moved onto phase II exploration though because we’ve been given the confidence from our initial drilling campaign with the proof of concept to allow us to move on because we’re still super excited about what there is to be found. Don’t forget, we’ve got the largest undiscovered high grade primary helium resource in the world and we can’t wait to get our teeth stuck back into it.
So, we’re starting with another 200 line kilometres of seismic on the northern extensions of the Itumbula and Tai structures. These are structural highs that were identified followed by gravity gradiometry which we believe are acting as conduits for helium migration and charge. On the initial results, we’re reviewing internally hoping to make an announcement in the next few weeks on multiple leads, it’s a very interesting data set.
We’ve commenced ERT, we’ve seen the results of our Multispectral Satellite Spectroscopy study and of course, the QEMSCAN results, all of which is building multiple layers of data which we integrated to assist our decision-making process and really understand the geologic risks in each of the prospects which we are evaluating. So, when we bring our big rig out over the summer of ’22, best geological information and the right team in place to deliver our discovery year in 2022.
Q3: Just looking forward into 2022, what should investors be looking out for and where do you see Helium One’s growth coming from?
A3: We’ve still got $9.7 million in the bank as of the end of December so that’s after the 2D seismic was completed, so we’re in a strong position to move forward.
In the next few weeks, as I said, we’ll be announcing the results of our initial review on the 2D seismic and also hoping to announce an MoU with a conventional rig provider. That’s really going to build the project up so you can see exactly what we’ll doing, where we’ll be drilling, why we’ll be targeting the targets that we target so super exciting the next few weeks and months coming up.
Of course, over the summer, we’ll have that big rig on the ground drilling 8.5 inch hole down to basement, it’s a conventional rig, a conventional set of wireline tools, everything that’s normal in terms of design in making a gas discovery and gives us the best possible opportunity for 2022 to be really a game-changing year.
I said 2021 was a transformational year for the company because we grew from being a private start-up to being an operating exploration team, 2022 could be another transformation year for us as we’ve got all the components parts in place to make our discovery and to turn ourselves from an explorer to a developer.
