Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Helix Exploration PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your question at any time and press send. Due to the significant attendance on today's call, the company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure that the company will be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to David Minchin, Chairman. Good afternoon.
Hi, everybody. First of all, thank you very much for attending. I've heard there's quite a few people on the line, which is good. What we thought is, we thought this would be an opportune moment as we are preparing to reenter Clink- 1 well, which was drilled very successfully in August. We'll be looking to reenter that, mobilizing rig next week. We thought this would be an opportune time to sort of bring our investor base together and just explain what we've seen in Clink- 1 and why we are so excited to be getting back into it. Without further ado, for people who have not seen Helix before, a quick update on who Helix are and what we've done.
We are a helium company looking for helium in North America. We IPO'd in April 2024, so we're still, you know, only about six months old. It was a significantly oversubscribed IPO. It was an offering book of $22.5 million, of which we took down $7.5 million. As to protect dilution while still making sure that we had enough cash on hand to complete all of our operations successfully. We raised about $10 million, that translates as. We quickly moved to contract well engineers, rig, et cetera, with a combined budget to do two wells of $4.1 million. The two wells will be on Ingomar, which we've already commenced on Clink- 1.
That's a large-scale project, stacked reservoir, with known gas, about 2.3 billion cubic feet, P50 helium resource with an upside of over 6 billion cubic feet. That's got a NPV8 of just over $300 million, based on an initial CapEx of $19.6 million and a free cash flow, after royalties, after tax, after OpEx of, over $600 million over a 20-year life of mine. That's a sort of a company-making project. That's why we've gone there to drill first. The other project we have in our portfolio is Rudyard.
This is smaller, it's about 0.6 BCF, but it's a proven helium discovery, so we're able to go straight into appraisal, and even at 0.6 of the BCF, you're looking at over $250 million of in situ value, all of which points towards a pair of highly economic projects, which we are drilling both of them before the end of this year and targeting 2 discoveries before the end of 2024 to bring into production before the end of 2025. A fast-moving management team. Important as well to remember why we drilled Clink 1, why we went into it and what we have achieved so far.
We drilled Clink 1 to test the stacked reservoir targets in the Amsden, Charles, Flathead formations and the fractured Precambrian basement play. Why we went into those targets is because historic drilling had identified known gas on all of those targets. They'd been tested. The Charles and the Amsden had been tested and shown to be high in nitrogen, but the system had never been tested for helium. With what we've achieved so far, we have, well, one, we've confirmed the suitability and the operational readiness of the rig and the crew. That's really important. Small team, we need to make sure the exploration dollars are being spent in a cost-effective way, and the rig team worked really well.
We've also been able to identify helium, not just in the Amsden and the Charles, on all of our target horizons, with the exception of the Precambrian, which we've not reached yet. That's really important because we're able to say for the first time that this is not just a known gas system, it's a known helium gas system. We also test for the potential of hydrogen with helium, which was something that Bo had identified early on as being a potential economic interest and a potential benefit to Helix. I was very pleased. We are both very pleased to see that there because that could be a game changer for the company.
What we've not been able to do yet is to wireline to identify porosity gas effect to understand the thickness of the reservoirs. We've not been able to sample gas and confirm grade. We've not been able to flow test in place. All of those are things which we want to complete on re-entry, so we're able to turn what's a set of very encouraging exploration results into a strategic discovery and a company-making discovery. Point one was we've demonstrated the rig and crew worked well. I'm pleased to be able to show you the time depth curve. You can see the black dotted line there. That was the pre-drilling time depth curve as planned by our petroleum engineers, petroleum consultants.
The red line is the actual curve that we achieved while drilling. You can see it matches incredibly well. This was a very capable rig and a very capable crew with no accidents, no incidents, spills or lost time. It's actually only a very unusual set of circumstances which has prevented us from completing the perfect well. I mean the perfect well in terms of not just the operation, but also what we've found. We would certainly be working with Treasure State Drilling again when we move to Rudyard at the end of October. Before I go into the results, I'm gonna give a quick technical recap on what a helium system and a hydrogen system are. This is unapologetically technical.
If you didn't want a very detailed technical presentation, don't ask a geologist to give the presentation. I'm not a showman, I'm a guy who drills holes. Drilling is itself a technical thing. If you know, there is a set of results that have come out of this which need to be understood. The first thing is to talk about the helium system. Now, I've spoken about the helium system in the past. The source for helium is ancient continental crusts with alpha particle emitters, uranium with thorium, emitting alpha particles. Alpha particles basically acquire extra electrons in the crust and become helium atoms. We refer to them as molecules in exploration, but they are just atoms.
These then are trapped in the crystal lattice of the ancient crust until there is a tectonic event or some sort of thermal shock which allows them to be liberated. They can then migrate along major crustal structures such as the Sumatra Thrust until they find suitable traps and reservoirs with seals which are able to contain them in economic levels. Now, for a helium system, the key components of the reservoir is the thickness, porosity and the permeability. That translates directly into volume and flow rates, which translates directly into economics. Where we are with Clink 1 at the moment with the much gas shows we have, doesn't tell us anything about the thickness, porosity or the permeability. So we don't know the economics.
What it does tell us about is that we have a helium system. Now, previously in England was a known nitrogen-rich gas system, which had flowed at the Alveston, which had gas tested in the Charles, and where there was a wireline gas effect in the Flathead, a long way down dip. The presence of helium in this gas show shows for the first time we can confirm this is a helium gas system. Importantly, what a gas show doesn't tell us is what the grade of that system is, or what the economics of that system might be. Okay, let me explain how a gas show works. On the schematic on the right-hand side, there's a drill which is entered into a helium-rich reservoir.
Now, the way the drill works is it pumps mud down the middle of the well, down the middle, through the pipe. Right. Goes around the end of the bit and up the outside. Now, when you get a gas show, what that means is that the bit which is breaking the rock has liberated gas out of that rock, and that gas has gone into the mud, and that mud moves up to the surface where it's been tested. However, the amount of gas that goes into the well, into the mud depends very much on the rate of penetration. It depends on the size of the bit, both of which go into the volume of rock, which will be broken. Depends on the weight of the mud.
It depends on the rate of mud flow, how much mud you're actually pumping around your system. Finally, it depends on the porosity and the grade. Watching so many variables, you can't calculate out the porosity and the grade from gas in the mud. What you can, however, do is get a very strong indication as to if you have got helium in the system or not. On this next page, you can see the helium mud shows, continuous measuring as we drill the well from 1,000 foot down to 8,030 foot. Samples were taken. Gas was measured about practically every second. We've averaged about every foot, and each dot there represents the gas show in that foot.
I'd like to point out the X scale is a logarithmic scale. What you see at 10 parts per million. I'm going to illustrate it with a pen because of technology. What you see at 10 ppm is 100 times more than a 100 is 100 times, 10 times more than a 1,000. There's a logarithmic scale here. Now the blue vertical line here, this is your background levels. That is the baseline which we measure from. There's a lot of noise between there and about 10 parts per million, so you could probably draw another line at sort of a 10 PPM level and say, "Yeah, you know, that's anything left of that isn't particularly significant." 'Cause you're only talking about, you know, 2 or 3 times over base level.
What is significant, however, is when you get into the Amsden here and when you get into the Charles here. Both of these, very big hits. We're talking about, you know, sort of over 200 parts per million in the Amsden, over 600 parts per million in the Charles. That's a good level to be at. You know, that's a. We're hoping that implies a nice reservoir. It's nice that those gas shows are matching it with where we've logged good quality reservoir materials in the mud cuttings. It's all looking. That's also where gas had been identified historically. So it's all pointing towards a nice gas-rich system. Moving down, not a lot going on between the Charles and the top of the Cambrian.
The top of the Cambrian, you sort of get this continuing increase here. In the announcement, we mentioned how there was continuous gas shows all the way throughout in the Cambrian, and then it jumps up quite nicely into the Flathead. Good gas shows all the way throughout the Cambrian, jumping up quite nicely into the Flathead. Bear in mind, this is a logarithmic scale that is quite a significant show. It's over 10 times over base over background. We've got gas shows on all of our primary targets, in the Amsden, the Charles, and the Flathead. We have not been able to test our tertiary target, which was the Precambrian, because that was not reached. Now, I'm gonna go on to talk about hydrogen. Hydrogen was something which Bo anticipated in as well.
I was perhaps a bit more skeptical. More fool me, because Bo certainly is the expert on this belt, having spent 25 years there. Hydrogen is very much an interesting commodity to be in at the moment. I would encourage all of you to be googling about hydrogen, about the investments for some big names such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Fortescue are making in hydrogen. It's very much seen as one of the future fuels because of its wide range of applications in things where lithium batteries can't be used, and because, you know, pure hydrogen doesn't have any greenhouse gas emissions.
The hydrogen market is worth about $100 billion a year, significantly more than the $6 billion a year which the helium market is worth. There's various shades of hydrogen. There's, you know, the gray hydrogen, the blue hydrogen, the green hydrogen. What we're looking at is geological hydrogen. That's hydrogen which is being sourced from the Earth and trapped in commercial quantities in reservoirs. This has potential to be the cheapest form of hydrogen, and certainly the cheapest form of green hydrogen, because there would be no CO2 emissions associated with the extraction and the winning of this type of geological hydrogen.
Hydrogen is formed through the serpentinization of mafic and ultramafic rocks between 200 and 315 degrees Celsius. Basically, you get your iron-rich olivines, your fayalites, and you combine them with water in a reducing environment, and that releases the hydrogen to go on. I tell you what. Excuse me. I'll remember this. Actually, I've got a lump of serpentinite in my office. This is from. I'll wet it so it stands out a bit. This is from, actually from the Semail Ophiolite in Oman. You can see it's this nice sort of lustrous green rock. You can see the sort of alteration halos around the veins and joints here. Sorry, I went on a complete tangent. Where was I?
Anyway, that releases hydrogen. It migrates along crustal structures. It needs a nice non-reactive reservoir. If it goes into limestone reservoirs, it can be consumed by carbon or by limestone to produce an abiotic methane. It sort of eats the limestone to produce a water-soluble form. Why Bo saw that there was potential for hydrogen in this area, he understood that the Wyoming Craton, which is an Archean melange with all types of rocks in there. But it is known to be rich in ultramafic rocks, and ultramafic rocks are the source for hydrogen.
Although helium and hydrogen have got very different sources, helium being sourced basically through decay of radioactive isotopes over a long period of time and hydrogen through serpentinization at medium temperatures. There was potential for hydrogen to be generated. Indeed, there were other wells which Bo was aware of, where hydrogen had been found in the past on this same belt. Basically the Sumatra Thrust is acting as the vector.
It allows the water down into the ultramafics in the serpentinization window, which then releases hydrogen back up the thrust, where it's able to migrate into reservoirs, and you get a very good non-reactive reservoir in the Flathead Formation, which is a pure quartzite, which has got the potential to trap and store economic hydrogen if it's there to be found. Moving on to what we see in Clink 1. This is not the full well. I've focused on the bottom, from 6,000 to 8,000. That's because the Charles Formation is the limestone, so will have consumed any hydrogen which has moved into the upper reservoirs. I'd also like to point out that the x-axis on this scale is in %, not in parts per million as the helium one was.
This is actual percentage of hydrogen in the mud. This is a scale and grade of mud shows, which is very unusual. Normally these things would be measured in parts per million or percentage of percentage. To see gas shows in mud of this tenor is very encouraging. You know, gas shows are diluted by their nature, so the grade in the ground would normally be higher than the grade that's in the mud. There's a few very positive things about this. You know, there's repeated little hydrogen shows on the way down through the Cambrian that might be related to sort of little stringy bits of porosity in you know, a few thin sandstone stringers in parts of the shale and the silt.
It's when we get down into the Flathead that we see the consistent takeoff in grade in mud shows, and we also see it continuing to increase with depth, which is really interesting. Another very interesting thing is that the Flathead, which was our primary target, that was prognosed to be between 25- and 45-foot thick, based on the results from Treasure 18-1, which is drilled about 6.5 miles away, and down dip. At the point where we stopped the well, we had already drilled 140 feet of Flathead. Grade was continuing to increase with depth, and the TD was called while we were still receiving quite strong hydrogen effect and still in Flathead.
That all looks quite encouraging for a hydrogen system at depth. What we need to do is to test it. The rig that we've secured is the Precision Drilling rig 704. It's an R.A. Hodgson MT 609-9.5-400 G, which doesn't mean a lot to me, but I do know that it's a telescopic double, which is a much bigger rig than we previously had. It's rated to drill to 15,000 feet. We don't know how deep the Precambrian might be or even if we can deepen the well, but we're sure that this will be able to get us into the Precambrian as required. Importantly, the max hook load is. That's significantly above what the Treasure State rig was.
When you're getting things into a well, you never have to push anything. Things slide down or they don't. It's pulling them out again is often the limiting factor on a rig, and you don't wanna make anything a one-way trip. Basically, this rig has got all of the requirements that we need to give us the best possible advantage of a successful re-entry. No re-entry is without risk, but these diagrams here show, I think, quite nicely what we're looking at and what the problems have been. This is actually to scale vertically. The ground surface is here. Again, excuse the quality of the sketches, I did them myself.
This little triangle here is meant to be a drill rig. You can see surface casing down to 750 feet, and then we're open hole to TD. The Mowry Shale was the unit that caused us problems. That's starting from about 2,100 feet. You know, it was a very unusual set of circumstances to see the Mowry Shale collapse. It's not previously known to be collapsing in this area. In fact, this is the first instance that we know about in this vicinity where sort of mud polymers, which are designed for holding back shales, it's the first instance where these mud polymers have failed.
We're gonna come back in with a KCl mud mix, which should be much better at holding back the shales. We're going to use Managed Pressure Drilling, so we're able to control the pressure on the annulus, which will assist in maintaining a stable pressure environment as we make connections when we're running in casings. All of that should help to make sure that reduces the sloughing on the Mowry Shale as we're going through it. We also with this rig, it's able to rotate and sort of be a bit agricultural with a seven-inch casing string, which should also help to hopefully get us out of trouble, if it's hanging on ledges or if it is beginning to pack off.
After we've done that, the next job will be to run a wiper trip to check the condition of the hole. If that bit gets down to TD with no issues, we would then need to make a decision about if we deepen the well or not. Now, that's gonna be a decision which is made on the site and on that time. You know, there's no guarantee that this will be a successful re-entry. There's no guarantee that if we do successfully re-enter, that we'll find the remainder of the hole in a good condition.
We're optimistic that we will and that we can, but we're not gonna jeopardize what we've already seen with deepening the well if the most sensible thing to do would be to get that well behind casing and to secure a sample of what we've already seen. That's a decision to be made at that time. I'm optimistic that we can deepen it, and I've got fingers crossed and toes crossed and touching wood every day. If we get to the bottom, we'll run a wireline that will target all of the reservoirs. That will give us a lot more geological data and much greater understanding of what's happening at depth.
Also allow us to properly target reservoirs where we're seeing gas effect in wirelines as well as from the mud shows. If all that works, the last thing we do would be to run in a 4.5-inch casing all the way to TD, whether that's the existing TD or a deeper TD, and to cement that and then to perforate and conduct the flow tests. The first gas to surface can be sent for analysis, and that will give us the helium grades and the hydrogen grades where appropriate, which will allow us to go into detailed engineering on our plant.
Over the next sort of four or five weeks, we will be flow testing each of our target horizons, which will allow us to really understand the depletion curves, and form a, you know, create a proper field development plan, with operating costs and capital costs, and complete a full feasibility study, with a target to secure construction finance and bring everything into production by the end of 2025. The next few weeks of October are vital. That's more or less it. We're opening up for questions. I just want to draw your attention to the image on the right. I included it on the last slide because I quite like it. You can see the rig there, which you think is quite a big operation.
When you zoom out to space, you can see the scale of the closure that we're looking at. You know, Ingomar Dome is not a small dome. It spans over 16,500 acres. It's got potential to, you know, as a structure, it's got potential to produce a strategic-sized traps in helium and now also maybe in hydrogen. You know, this is what we go into exploration for. This is the well that we want to drill. You know, this is showing all the good signs. We're really excited. We're excited to be getting back into it and looking forward to sharing those results with you over the next few weeks.
That's great. Thank you very much indeed.
Pleasure.
That's great. David, thank you very much indeed. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. While Bo and David take a few moments to review your questions submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your Investor Meet Company dashboard. David, Bo, you received a number of questions ahead of today's event along with a number of questions throughout your presentation. Thank you firstly to everybody for your engagement. If I may, Emily, just hand back to you to moderate through that Q&A, and I'll pick up from you at the end.
Yeah, absolutely. Just starting with the first question, which was pre-submitted. What are the additional costs for the following up drill on Clink- 1, and what is the overall cash position looking like today?
Okay. Bo, I'll take this first one. You've been quiet for half an hour, but I'll give you a chance on the next one. Yeah, additional costs for this look to be between half a million and maybe three-quarters of a $million for the rig and the testing and all, everything that we're doing. Bear in mind, in April we raised $10 million. The AFE to drill both Ingomar and Rudyard is just over $4 million. We're in a very strong cash position still. We remain very strong, very well funded out over the next 12 - 18 months.
We're fully funded for all of our planned exploration activities.
Great. The next question is, are you able to give a guide based on the figures given in the mud logs as to how much larger the shows of helium and hydrogen could be?
It's a good question. The mud log itself measures percentages of percentages. It is the gas coming out of the rock and up the annulus of the wellbore, and then is measured with a mass spectrometer. You cannot quantify what the actual percentage of hydrogen or helium is in the gas. However, what comes out of the mud log system would imply a much larger figure in the actual formation. In the case of, take for instance the 10% hydrogen in the Cambrian sandstone, the Flathead, that would imply something of a magnitude much higher than 10% in the actual formation. That was very, very exciting. On the helium side, when you have that magnitude above ambient air of 5.2 parts per million, that implies a robust helium system.
Now generally speaking, helium in any formation, is anywhere from you know, say 0.3%-3% mostly. Only on very rare occasions do you have upwards of 10% helium. If you have the volumes behind it, smaller concentrations of helium become commercial. In this case we essentially twinned the well, meaning we drilled very close to the old wellbore that was flow testing at 8.5 million a day of raw gas, which we now know to contain helium. We're very excited about the mud log results. We think they far exceeded our expectations and believe that we're sitting on a very unique system here.
Fantastic. Just, one more question on Clink- 1. Will you wireline what you already have drilled first once the shale has been recased, or go straight to drilling further if the hole allows?
Assuming a successful re-entry and setting intermediate casing over the problem formation, which is the Mowry Shale, we will attempt to deepen the well, come back out, do a wiper trip, in order to clean the side of the wellbore out, and then we'll run wireline logs. If we run wireline logs, it will be through the deepened formation and everything else above it up until the bottom of the intermediate casing, set wherever that is. No, we won't run logs till the very end.
A question on a comment made regarding the hydrogen readings. Has there been any interest from other companies in the Ingomar project?
Not yet. This hydrogen show is very new, very exciting. We think it's incredibly unique. I think from our vantage point, given the other players in the space, like Koloma or HyTerra, we are leaps and bounds ahead of them, right? Because we actually have a wellbore with hydrogen shows. We are extremely excited, but do not yet know what it actually means. The fact that we have such high readings is enormous. It's fantastic. We cannot quantify at this stage. It's merely a fascinating development that we've uncovered.
Thank you. How confident are you that you have the right team, rig, and tools to address the shale issue?
Very. Highly confident. The drilling engineering firm that we hired, they've been in the business a long time. Fact of the matter is shale can be very, very tough. Shale can drink the water in the mud system, and like a clay sometimes it absorbs it and expands and will slough off into the wellbore. That's exactly what we had here. We drilled this well with a polymer-based water mud so as to prevent this from happening. However, the Mowry Shale was so loosely consolidated that it just gave us problems. These were unanticipated problems, but problems like this do happen. I've been in the business for, you know, drilling wells for 32 years now and, you know, seldom does a well go perfectly every single time. You do have these problems.
Going forward, we have a post-mortem, makes us believe that a KCl-based mud, potassium chloride-based mud, will hold that shale back. And so that we can hold it back while we put that 7-inch casing, intermediate casing in there. We believe we've got it under control. It is certainly not without risk, but the probability is quite high that we can have a successful re-entry here.
Thank you. Is the depth of the Precambrian at Ingomar known, and how confident are you can drill it with the new rig?
We are very confident we can drill into the Precambrian with this second rig. This is a double rig that can go very deep. It can drill very deep wells. We know we can hit it. Where it is, we don't know. We know we're sitting very close to it because the Cambrian sandstones only sit right on top of the Precambrian rock. We know we're very close. We could be hitting repeat sections on the way down. Yeah, we think in another 100 feet we should at least cover the Precambrian. That's our estimate anyway.
Is Ingomar looking commercial for helium and hydrogen?
Yes. On the helium, absolutely. Again, we offset the well in 1944 that tested 8.5 million a day of water-free gas containing nitrogen, never analyzed for helium. We now know that contains helium. On the hydrogen side, we are uncertain. However, the quantity of hydrogen in that system is beyond anything that we have ever seen. So we can't really quantify it. We don't know if it's yet commercial, but it is certainly something that warrants further investigation. If we do find it and it's water-free and that hydrogen can be produced, this would be the cleanest hydrogen you could produce anywhere on planet Earth. There is only one well on planet Earth that is presently producing hydrogen, and that is in Mali, Africa.
That's about 98% pure hydrogen, and they're using that hydrogen to power a small village. Now, there are other companies out there looking for the stuff. They have not yet found it. That puts us in the lead, if this is indeed a commercial well.
Great. Do you have exploration and appraisal plans beyond Ingomar and Rudyard?
Right now we're focused on those two projects. Ingomar, obviously our marquee project. That's the one we're gonna put the most focus on. It's the largest by far. Rudyard is an excellent project. We have demonstrated commercial flows of helium-bearing gas in there. So no, down the road, of course, we're gonna look at other projects, but we need to stay laser-focused on the two projects that we have in hand right now.
Great. How are the forward sale and partnership plans shaping up for CapEx development and distribution post-testing?
CapEx on processing facilities, those are very bespoke creatures. They are built on the composition of the gas and the flow rates, both of which we do not yet know. We'll have a better handle on what we're looking at or what our needs are on processing once we have those metrics delivered. As far as offtake, that's what Greg Peters is on our board for. He is a professional, was with Praxair for years. He knows where the helium's gonna go. We're very lucky to have him. Really no concerns on where the offtake's gonna go. On the hydrogen side, if it's there, the world is ours. There's lots of places to go with that. Ammonia production, for instance. These ammonia manufacturers are looking for green hydrogen anywhere they can get.
You know, hydrogen for any other uses they need for their ESG stamp, they need green hydrogen. This would be the greenest hydrogen you could find anywhere on the globe.
Fantastic. Just a question around shareholder dilution. How committed are you to maintaining a small number of shares in issue and indeed not diluting your own holding?
Well, I mean, we are sat in a room with the two biggest shareholders, who are also the Chairman and the Chief Executive. For us, it's really important not to dilute ourselves, but also not to dilute our investors. You know, people invest in us to grow and develop a company, and that's exactly what we're planning to do. We're planning on doing that in the best interest of all shareholders.
Thanks, David. When the wells are flowing, is there a route to market, or do we have to wait until the processing plant is finished?
To cash flow, we need post-production, post-plant. We will have certainly begun discussions on offtake agreements prior to plant fabrication. But as far as molecule sales, that won't happen until a plant is produced. It also depends-
To be fair, you know, it's that's not a long timeline. You know, we're still targeting first production before the end of 2025. We should rapidly get into positive cash flow once we get moving. No, there's no market for raw gas unless we sort of trucked it to a toll treatment and that would not have any market. There'd be no margin there. It wouldn't be in anyone's interest.
Are you going to hold onto the larger rig and drill a second hole?
Mm-hmm
This time go deeper than 8,000 feet?
We have the ability. We have staked another location near the Clink- 1 well. It is certainly in the realm of possibility, depending on the results of this particular well.
Do we have any percentage numbers for the helium shows?
No percentage numbers. Again, the mud log can only measure pieces of pieces, percentages of percentages. The fact that it's there and is being very diluted in the mud system means that the actual composition of the helium in the actual formation is much higher than you would ever see in the mud system. The magnitude of helium shows in the Amsden and the Charles Formation were so high that we would anticipate certainly something in the very commercial range of helium production.
Thank you. What has been the cost impact due to the change in the rig? Will you be using the same rig for Rudyard?
Yeah, as I said in answer to the first question, we're looking at about half a million dollars, maybe up to $750,000, for using this rig for the re-entry. The plan remains to use the Treasure State rig for drilling at Rudyard. As I showed in one of the early slides, it's a highly competent rig. It's a very competent rig with a very competent crew. It's only really a very unusual set of circumstances which has resulted in us getting stuck here at Clink and having to bring in the Precision Drilling rig. We're delighted for Precision Drilling to join our team, and we can certainly see them being useful at Ingomar.
You know, we you know, the Precision Drilling rig is perfect for what we need at Rudyard, and that's what we'll be using it for.
Thank you, David. I know we've slightly touched on this, but how much of a risk is it that re-entry with the new rig might completely fail?
There is always that risk. Nothing is without risk in the exploration world. Sloughing shales can be an issue. We can't sugarcoat it and say there is no risk here. That's just patently false. We do, however, have a very high probability that we can re-enter this thing, and that's what we have to go with. The fact of the matter is we've analyzed the situation of the Mowry Shale and believe that we can get past it with this KCl mud. We've had second and third opinions from various experts on what our best path forward is, each of whom have said that a successful re-entry is highly probable. We certainly can't discount the risk.
From my point of view, and I've not been drilling for 32 years like Bo has, I'm new to this sort of oil and gas technology and what these guys can do with these rigs out in the USA. You know, from my point of view, I think we've put together the best team that we can here. We've got the best rig that was available. We've got the best crew in Montana to welcome the engineering and the design of these things. We've got a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C in place. All of the experts are telling us we've got the best chance that we have. As Bo said, it's not without risk, but I'm excited to have a pop.
Thank you, David. Can you rule out a placing in the near future before the completion of Clink- 1?
Yes.
Great. The next question, along the same lines is, if all goes to plan, when do you expect first income?
Everything goes to plan, I'd be looking for production before the end of 2025. You know, there'll be obviously debt to service out of that first cash that comes through. You know, we're also looking at Ingomar. We're looking at a modular expansion plan with the first module financing the second module. There could be a gap between first income and first dividends. Yeah, we're ambitious to be a good quality dividend-paying stock, you know, churning out cash distributions to shareholders every year, while also becoming the agglomerator for low-risk helium and now hydrogen projects on the Montana Helium Fairway.
We can grow into a sort of a medium-sized helium producer and distributor in the United States, which becomes a strategic competitor in the market, and which is a sort of a disruptive new entrant into the space.
Thank you, David. Assuming a large complex reservoir, is there any limitation to gas extraction if gas spans the license boundary?
Beyond the license boundary? Absolutely. It's certainly possible. We've got the entire anticline very well covered, so we're very comfortable with regards to areal extent. If it does go beyond the scope, you know, I don't see any issue there. I think we can, especially out of the Cambrian sandstones, those are very porous and permeable sands. We should be able to drain a whole lot of gas per section, per 1 sq mi of land, which we have many here. Really no concerns on my end. It's a very large anticline, and we've got the entire anticline as mapped, at least as mapped on the surface under lease.
Thank you, Bo. There's just two more questions. The first one is, when do we get to meet other members of the board of directors and hear about their exciting plans for Helix?
They are equally excited to meet all of you all. We hope to get them over in London in November. It just depends on everybody's timelines. Love our team. You know, so much experience under their belt. They're the right people for this particular project and this company and yeah, can't wait for you all to meet them.
Thank you. The final question is from someone, just out of interest, how many employees do Helix have? Would drilling be entirely outsourced so the company actually has very few staff?
I think you're speaking to the staff now, aren't you? There's me and Bo. We've got a team of consultants. You know, people like the petroleum consultants based out in Billings in Montana, who are doing a fantastic job of engineering the wells we're drilling and, you know, and the re-entry that we're about to start. We've got the teams on the rig. We've got Treasure State Drilling. We've got Precision Drilling. We've got a whole range of support here in London, including Emily here and Camarco who's asking the questions. We're a big organization with a low number of employees, which keeps our burn rate down.
That's great. Emily, thank you very much indeed for taking us through today's questions. I think that's pretty much every question. If there are any other questions, of course we can make those available to you guys post today's call. David, Bo, I know investor feedback will be particularly important to you both, and I'll shortly redirect investors on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. Perhaps before doing so, David, I could just return to you for a couple of closing comments.
I just want to say thank you to everybody for joining. I hope that the presentation has helped to sort of reflect our excitement as we come back into Clink -1 and explain to you a little bit about what we found and why we're so keen to bring Precision Drilling in to re-enter the well. I think the next few weeks for the company are gonna be really interesting as we re-enter Clink and as we move on to drilling in Rudyard. There's an awful lot to look forward to in the next few months. Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you very much for your questions and, yeah, we look forward to keeping the market informed as we advance our operations.
That's great. David, Bo, thank you once again for updating investors. If I could please ask investors not to close the session, as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. This may take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Helix Exploration PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.