Australian company will start drilling for natural hydrogen in the US this year
HyTerra has suspended trading of its shares ahead of a $4m fundraise
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The company already fully owns 9,600 acres (39sq km) of land for its Nemaha project, where it claims more than ten hotspots for natural hydrogen and helium have been detected.
Additionally, HyTerra also expects that its land has, to a probability of 90%, 37 million standard cubic feet (about a million cubic metres) of helium under the surface, an increasingly expensive commodity. The start-up notes that liquefied helium currently sells for around $450 per thousand cubic feet, or 50 times the price of liquefied natural gas.
The firm has suspended trading of its shares on the Australian Stock Exchange in advance of a placement of 48.8 million new shares (expected to raise up to $878,400) and a rights issue for current shareholders of four new shares per nine existing shares (expected to raise up to $5.24m).
HyTerra plans to spend around A$1.5m to continue leasing priority areas and A$2m to drill two wells, with evaluations of geophysical data and resource, as well as a commercialisation plan, set to take place from the fourth quarter onwards.
The company previously drilled for natural hydrogen and helium at the Geneva project in the adjoining US state of Nebraska, saying it had found “elevated” levels of hydrogen during swab testing.
The start-up did not respond to recent enquiries about the status of the Geneva project, and its website still states that the project partners are “awaiting the provision of key data and metrics”.
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