Modern Mining February 2022

ENERGY

Helium constraints Renergen in a sweet spot

The helium market was projected to return to balance in 2022, but unpredicted events over the past few months, including multiple fires at the world’s largest helium facility, have pushed the already constrained market to critical levels, driv- ing the spot price to ‘unimaginable’ heights, Renergen CEO Stefano Marani tells Mod- ern Mining’s Nelendhre Moodley.

T his means that emerging helium and domestic natural gas producer Renergen, which counts down to commercial produc- tion from its flagship Virginia Gas project in the Free State in the next two months, does so at a most propitious time. Dual listed Renergen’s principal asset is its wholly-owned Tetra4 facility, which holds the only onshore petroleum production right in South Africa, giving it first mover advantage on distribution of domestic natural gas. The company’s Virginia Gas Project, located some 250 km southwest of Johannesburg, is a natural gas find with one of the richest helium concentrations recorded globally. The project comprises production rights of 187 000 ha of gas fields across Welkom, Virginia

The junior miner will bring the first phase of its close to R1-billion project into production in April, becoming the first supplier of helium in sub-Saharan Africa, and first commercial supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in South Africa. “We are excited to finally see Phase One of the project come online which will validate the proof of concept and the hard work that has gone into developing the project,” says Marani. Phase 1 of the production is expected to produce 350 kg of helium a day – “delivering the equivalent of LNG to power 400 trucks,” explains Marani. Phase 2 will ramp up production to 5 tonnes (t) of helium per day by 2024, which will account for roughly 8% of the world’s market production. Although the licence for its wholly-owned project runs to 2042, Marani flags its extensive landholding accompanied by vast untapped reserves. “We have only explored 14% of the tenement with many more exploration programmes to be under- taken in the future. As it stands, the gas reserves on

Stefano Marani, Renergen CEO.

and Theunissen in the Free State, with additional exploration rights in Evander. “The source of the Virginia Gas Project’s natural gas is primarily microbial, orig- inating from deep within the Witwatersrand Supergroup. Aside from containing some of the richest helium concentrations globally, the natural gas is extremely pure with an average of over 90% methane,” explains Marani. The Tetra4 production right targets the extraction of all petroleum products – chiefly natural gas, which contains methane and helium.

Construction of water circulation reservoir.

16  MODERN MINING  February 2022