The Moose Jaw region will be part of the ascending helium industry if a Calgary-based exploration company is successful.
Global Helium has acquired over 1.5 million acres of helium leases in Saskatchewan including a core area of 835,000 aces north and south of Moose Jaw.
The move is in reaction to a worldwide shortage of helium. Helium prices have more than doubled since 2019 when the United States ceased selling helium from federal lands.
Those lands produced 21 per cent of global helium output.
The Saskatchewan leases extend from Riverhurst southeast to just north of Old Wives Lake.
The company is spending $2.4 million doing seismic work, acquiring existing seismic data, evaluating the results and drilling a 2,000-metre test well.
The area was chosen as it sits in the “helium fairway” of this region, Global Helium CEO and president Mike Siemens said in a news release.
The fairway ranges from northern Montana and southeastern Alberta to southern Saskatchewan.
A 17,000-acre area near Lawson west of Central Butte, Montana, is a prime target, based on an oil and gas exploration well drilled by Imperial Oil in 1944. That well found no oil or natural gas but flowed non-combustible gas with 95 per cent identified as nitrogen.
Technology either wasn’t available or wasn’t used to identify the other 5 per cent. Global believes much of it is helium.
Seismic work has outlined an apparent structural trap for helium on the acreage near Lawson. Another potential structural trap was identified on the nearby Vermilions Hills, Saskatchewan, lease.
The company has $9.5 million cash to explore and develop helium.
Global also has a 435,000-acre block lease 150 kilometres south of Regina and a 275,000-acre lease along the Montana border east of Climax in an area where other explorers have found helium.
The Saskatchewan Government has an incentive program paying back up to $5 million capital and operating costs for exploration with only a 5.per cent royalty on production.
Canada’s largest helium purification facility is now operating in Saskatchewan. North American Helium Inc. owns and operates the $32 million facility near Consul, where production started in May of 2021.
