In a grassy plain in the Free State – once South Africa’s largest gold-mining complex – prospectors have stumbled upon a new treasure: helium.
You may find yourself asking: What do we need more helium for? There’s enough at every King Cake and Crazy Store to fill all our birthday balloons.
Well, beyond this, helium’s unique properties play a significantly underrated role with its invaluable use in medical devices, semiconductors, rocket launching propellants, and the manufacturing of fibre optic cables and TV sets, among many other applications.
“Pretty much any modern-day creature feature that you could want wouldn’t exist without helium, so it is pretty important,” explains Chief Executive Officer, Stefano Marani explained.
Renergen will become one of only eight liquid helium producers in the world at the end of July. The Virginia Gas Project is the only onshore petroleum plant in South Africa. The site covers an area that includes Welkom, Virginia, and Theunissen.
Marani recently told CNBC Africa that the first phase of the company’s Virginia Gas Project in the Free State, which started construction in 2019, is set to be commissioned by the end of July 2022.
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The company reckons that the helium deposits at the 187 000 hectare facility, which will be operated by its subsidiary Tetra 4, producing well above the average of 120 000 standard cubic feet per day.
This could mean that the Virginia Gas Project wells might hold the richest and cleanest concentration of the gas in the world with 9.74 billion cubic metres of helium reserves.
Marani and Chief Operating Officer Nick Mitchell had only liquified natural gas (LNG) in mind when they bought the gas rights in the area for $1 in 2012, worth about R8 at the time. But their survey discovered unusually massive helium potential estimated to be worth more than $100 billion (R1.71 trillion).
“That was when we knew we had something special,” Marani said. “It really was right place, right time.”
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As reported by Mybroadband, the plant will now extract both products, which will be in high demand due to the world’s growing energy demand and the need for helium in semiconductor and rocket fuel manufacture.
Initial outputs will be relatively small, with a 50 tonne-per-day nameplate capacity for LNG as well as approximately 300 to 350 kg of helium, all of which will be exported. There is currently no method for synthetically producing helium, making it a highly valuable and sought after commodity.
The volume is equal to about one and a half times South Africa’s entire helium consumption.
The company has already lined up two big customers that will buy its LNG — Ceramic Industries (a subsidiary of Italtile) and Consol Glass — to help them wean off their operations from heavier fossil fuels.
Ceramic Industries and Consol Glass will consume around 60% of phase one’s LNG, while the remaining 40% will be available for trucks in the logistics industry which can also be used as an alternative fuel for generators, providing a 70% reduction in carbon emissions at a significantly lower cost.
Marani said the project’s second phase would be a significantly larger endeavour on a “global scale”.
The plant employs about 75 people, and phase two will bring that figure to 150 or 160 people.
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“The biggest impact is going to be the additional people that our wholesalers and our customers employ for the gas… from a technical perspective and from an operational perspective,” Marani said.
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Picture: Unsplash