Very valuable in the way that manganese seafloor nodules, or gold on an asteroid is vauable - terrific inground value but difficult to build into a viable extractive business.
It's been some years since I did any research on helium - CTP has been talking about it for more than 10 years already - so the below is entirely from memory.
The helium concentration in the Amadeus is among the highest, if not the highest, in the world. This is a result of it being such an old basin underlain by old granites which produce the helium through radioactive decay, plus the presence of thick salt seals which are necessary to trap it, as conventional shale seals don't work on helium as it's so light. The world's helium currently comes from US gas fields where it's at a fraction of one percent of the gas stream. By comparison in the Amadeus helium contents are up to 10%. So the helium is there, but it would require some very specific and expensive infrastructure to extract, separate and pipe it to market.
One major risk is geological and is typical to the Amadeus, and that's that as such an old basin it has generally very poor reservoir rocks. They have been uplifted and reburied several times, losing porosity and permeability along the way. Generally this gets worse the deeper you go and since the helium concentrations are generally in the lower part of the Amadeus sequence (near the granite basement and under the salts) it's going to be pretty hard to find a productive reservoir down there. Dukas may have found one but we need Santos to go back and find out.
The second major risk is market-based - the world market in helium is very inelastic as it's not a large market and it's dominated by the US government's strategic helium reserve. It would not be at all difficult for the US to crash the world helium price long enough to force any new producer out of the market. Basically commercialising CTP's helium resources would require a very deep-pocketed partner who was in it for the long haul. My hope for the helium is that some O&G major looking to diversify its operations in the face of ESG scrutiny might choose to take a punt on it.
CTP Price at posting:
11.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
