Noble Helium set to spin the bit with rig mobilising to Kinambo 1 well site

• Drilling rig and equipment currently en-route from Kenya to Tanzania
• All permits in place to facilitate border exit/entry process
• SLB’s wireline logging and downhole sampling tools secured
• Drilling operations expected to start in November

Noble Helium (ASX: NHE) is expected to commence drilling at Kinambo 1 in Kenya this month with the Schramm T130XD drilling rig on its way to site.

The transportation of the rig and and equipment packages from their base in Kenya involves a journey of approximately 1,500 km.

The rig and equipment are being transported using 13 ruggedised lorries and trailers, far fewer than the 40 individual truck loads required for the company’s Mbelele drilling campaign in 2023.

A number of trucks have already successfully crossed the border, with the remaining equipment expected to cross into Tanzania over the next few days.

The Kinambo exploration drilling campaign is an important step in Noble Helium’s North Rukwa helium project in Tanzania. SLB’s well logging and data collection tools will enable the generation of downhole technical data to support future independent reserves certification. The dataset may also assist with the assessment of the potentially much larger eastern margin.

Weather is not anticipated to adversely impact the delivery and rig-up of the drilling unit due to the ruggedised rig package and favourable weather forecasts.

Executive chairman, Dennis Donald, said drilling operations are expected to commence in November.

“We’re excited to get the execution phase of the Kinambo drilling campaign underway and the transportation team is making good progress,” he said.

“Although we began mobilising the drilling rig and equipment in September, we prudently elected to pause mobilisation until we had confirmation that the wireline logging contractor, SLB, had completed all prior commitments and the testing, sampling and data collection tools would be available.

“This ensured we had all the necessary equipment assembled and ready to go without incurring the substantially higher costs of on-site day rates and crew costs while we waited for the testing spread to become available.

“The SLB testing spread and tools are absolutely critical to this campaign – there are no other suitable tool packages available in the region.

“The data we collect will underpin a planned independent resource assessment of the western margin prospects and increase our understanding of the potentially much larger eastern margin targets.”

Review and analysis of mud-gas readings obtained during the previous drilling of Mbelele-1 at North Rukwa clearly indicated helium readings significantly above background from around 75m to 125m.

Recently completed reservoir modelling demonstrated the potential for commercial flow rates from this part of the Mbelele structure.

NHE was steady at 2.3¢ with a Mkt cap of $28.68M prior to markets opening.

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