On Wednesday, Gold Hydrogen announced plans for commercial helium production at Ramsay 1, just outside Port Vincent on the Yorke Peninsula. The ABC: the first helium production in Australia since Santos’s Darwin plant ran out in 2023. A commercial plan. Not production already running. Dump ABC.

A modular plant, the size of two tennis courts, on the 75,000-square-kilometre tenement. Managing director Neil McDonald: up and running in about 18 months. The ABC: more testing and approvals are still required. Eighteen months is a target. It is not a law. The hole is almost 900 metres deep.

McDonald: “the world’s best helium purities ever reported”, geology and economics. That is his claim. Three months after the first extraction at Ramsay 1. The ASX, 20 October: testing across three wells is finished; flowing, purifying and bottling on site is not commercial production. In July the same company wrote it plainly: a test, not production.

McDonald: 41 billion cubic feet at one of seven permits; the world consumes about 5 a year. Two numbers. Do not mix them. “Tens of years” of domestic and export supply is an estimate, not a certified reserve. The ASX: a contingent-resource assessment, targeted for November. That is not certification.

The ABC ties the global shortage to strikes on Qatar’s Ras Laffan plant in March. That is the story’s explanation. It is not this article’s war tally. McDonald: the domestic market first, then surplus, as with other commodities. Australia imports all its helium. There is no plant open.

Dump ABC. The rewrite rests on the ABC and Gold Hydrogen’s 20 October ASX announcement.

Image: Marine Parade, Port Vincent, South Australia, 10 January 2010, Mattinbgn, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The waterfront, not the Ramsay 1 well.

Sources consulted: Ramsay Helium Testing Confirms Extensive, Productive Reservoir — Gold Hydrogen (ASX).