Renergen, operator of South Africa’s only onshore gas extraction facility, said its helium plant was at temperature and operational and its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production was moving back into a stable, reliable trend.
The group, which operates from a site in Virginia, in the Free State, and which only brought its helium train into full production in August after a series of start-up related delays, said in a second-quarter update yesterday that LNG production was stable when compared to previous quarters in the prior 12 months.
Two new, high helium exploration wells were completed in the quarter and converted to production ready status. Geological data confirmed the presence of an unmodelled gas-bearing fault, which would be targeted for future drilling.
LNG production came to 1 249 tons, this after production was impacted by several system shut-downs related to the final commissioning of the helium system and minor efficiency losses, which were rectified during annual maintenance, completed in September 2024.
The helium system integration was completed. The company has produced helium since July 19, 2024. Optimisation efforts during the commissioning phase had also yielded “impressive results”, evidenced by a “significant reduction in timelines for the plant start-up and cool-down processes”.
The group provided a chronology of its helium cool-down periods. The first and second cool-downs in 2022 and 2023 were impacted by a leak in the helium cold box (subsequently repaired), while the third attempt in February 2024 took longer due to a more conservative cool-down approach to ensure no adverse impacts post the leak repair.
The fourth cool-down in May 2024 was taken to test further refinement of the cool-down methodology and operating philosophy. During this cool-down the manufacturer introduced a buffer storage tank between the nitrogen and helium cold boxes to improve operational efficiency of the helium system, which was completed prior to the fifth cool-down.
The fifth cool-down post the completion and installation of the value engineering solution reduced the time frame to nine days.
“With helium production now achieved and Tetra4 in complete operational control of the process plant since starting the project in 2019, the team will focus on achieving stability across both LNG/LHe operations,” the group said.
Two high helium concentration exploration wells were drilled. The first was successfully flow tested and sampled resulting in 3.32% helium, with a flow rate of 106 000 SCFD (standard cubic foot per minute).
An additional well was planned to intersect a newly discovered fault, but a series of rods were lost “down-hole”. Despite this, the well confirmed the existence of an additional gas-bearing fault with helium rich (2.68%) gas.
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