As the rig’s diesel engine reverberated around the drilling site, Trigui returned to his mobile laboratory, a dusty portacabin filled with microscopes and rock samples. Checking the data on his computer, he found what he had been waiting for since arriving in Rukwa: The gas spectrometer was detecting a spike in helium levels in the rock they were in. wait because of. This is what is called “a gas show.” Trigui kicked open the cabin door and went to the sump, where the mud pumped up from the drilling rig was deposited. It bubbled like a jacuzzi.
“It’s here,” he said to himself. “Heli is here!”
Trigui recorded a video of bubbling mud on his phone and excitedly texted his colleagues at the camp. Through a cigarette break, he talked to the drill crew; No one has seen anything like this before. They believe they have unearthed the world’s first large “green” helium deposit, and the first sizable helium deposit since 1967.
The bubbles continued to float until 2 a.m., when the drill drilled another 30 feet. Then, suddenly, it lost all torque. The engine changes the sound from a low drone to a high hum. The drillers looked on, bewildered.
The drill bit — a 6-inch-thick spiral in stainless steel and tungsten — is connected to the motor by a series of steel tubes that screw together to form a wire. One of the joints in the rope was broken. The team had no choice but to pull it out of the hole, leaving the 300-foot pipe, and bit, still down there.
As the sun rises, David Minchin, CEO of Helium One, wakes up at camp. Not yet aware of the failure, he saw Trigui’s Heli data on his computer screen and immediately thought, This is going to be the best day of my life. He put on long pants, jumped out of the tent and called out with a cheerful “Good morning!” for Randy Donald, the site supervisor.
“Haven’t you heard?” Donald said.
“Heard what?” Minchin replied.
“It’s not good. It’s really not good.”
During the 1950s, a geologist named TC James traveled a lot to what is now known as Tanzania. As lead mining geologist at the British-administered Tanganyika Geological Survey, his mission is to develop a better understanding of the country. geology by identifying things like cropland and mineral deposits. On one of these trips, James sampled a gaseous hot spring near the tiny village of Itumbula, in the Rukwa basin, that has attracted locals for centuries.
James’s findings told him that these gases were extremely rich in helium, but he thought nothing of it. At that time, helium was available. The National Helium Reserve, a massive geological helium storage unit created by the United States government in 1925 by recovering helium from gas fields in the Texas Panhandle, is reaching its peak. With billions of cubic feet of raw helium stored and demand for it still growing, there’s no reason to pursue gas in a remote location lacking basic infrastructure – roads, electricity, water subsistence – necessary to develop a project.
