Blue Star increases helium resources

ASX-listed US helium player, Blue Star Helium, has upgraded the potential resources for two high-grade targets at its Las Animas helium project in Colorado ahead of a maiden drilling program.

Perth-based Blue Star increased the combined prospective resources for the Enterprise and Galileo prospects by 16.5 per cent to 3.497 billion cubic feet of net recoverable helium in the 2U/P50 category.

The new numbers were arrived at following an independent updated assessment of the company’s recently expanded lease holdings – to a gross total of 177,000 acres or a net 120,000 acres – in the “proven high-grade helium fairway” immediately adjacent to the historic Model Dome helium field.

Work on the resource reassessment for the Enterprise and Galileo prospects was undertaken by North American-based energy consulting group Sproule. Blue Star says it also expects Sproule to soon deliver an estimate of unrisked prospective helium resources for the Galactica and Pegasus prospects that rank similarly to Enterprise, according to an initial internal analysis done by Blue Star.

After taking into account the company’s recently increased acreage position and the highly ranked new targets, management has decided to commit to sinking more wells during its maiden drilling campaign than the originally planned one well at Enterprise. The additional wells remain subject to drilling permit approvals and surface access agreements.

The Model Dome field, discovered in the 1920s, produced helium gas at a gobsmacking grade of 8 per cent and is acknowledged as one of the US’s and the world’s highest helium concentration fields. It was in production for only a short period before the US Government’s strategic acquisition of the field for the country’s strategic commodity reserves.

Blue Star Helium Managing Director, Joanne Kendrick said: “Our preliminary internal assessment ranks the Galactica and Pegasus drilling targets on equal footing with Enterprise, which is very exciting.”

“An expanded drilling campaign will maximise the prospective resources tested in our maiden campaign and deliver clear advantages over the previously planned single well at Enterprise.”

“Whilst we await permit approval for Enterprise, our operations team is heading to the field to review several additional drilling locations in preparation for final location selection and well staking for the expanded program.”

Blue Star hopes to obtain drilling approval for newly selected locations in early 2021.

Helium gas is used across a significant list of sectors, not just the party balloon sphere. It is vitally important in cryogenic applications such as – the largest use of helium – cooling the superconducting magnets in MRI machines, fibre optic cabling manufacture, cooling magnets in cloud-based supercomputer hard drives and servers, and space exploration.

Other applications for helium include in semiconductor manufacturing and arc welding as an inert shielding gas, for leak detection in pipelines, rocket propulsion systems, as well as in defence, lifting gas, medical, engineering and high-level science industries. It has also been designated as a critical commodity by the US Government.

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