Georgina Energy will run a new seismic survey over its Hussar Prospect in Western Australia's Officer Basin, after weather and road closures delayed the mobilization of the Ensign Rig 970 to the drill site. The survey, covering roughly 350 line kilometers, will be funded in full by Harlequin Energy, subject to regulatory approval.
The change followed a review of older seismic data over the Hussar Prospect by Dr Brian Evans, a distinguished emeritus professor at Curtin University. Evans's review found what the company calls Direct Helium and Hydrogen Indicators, which show up in the data as "bright spots, phase reversals or gas chimneys." The new survey is designed to sharpen that picture and to better define the salt layer that seals the Townsend Formation and fractured basement zones below it.
Lightweight equipment, no rig access needed
The survey will use lightweight vibration sources mounted on rubber-tyred or crawler tractors rather than heavy vehicles, so it does not depend on the road access the rig mobilization needs. It will also use wireless geophone nodes that transmit data by Bluetooth for daily collection, without cleared lines or long geophone cables. Field work is expected to take about 30 days, pending approval from the Western Australian Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration and from Traditional Owners on cultural heritage grounds.
Subsalt gas and a re-entry well
Hussar is an upstream exploration prospect in Exploration Permit 513, in Western Australia's Officer Basin. It targets subsalt reservoirs, chiefly the Townsend Formation and fractured Neoproterozoic basement rock, for helium, hydrogen and natural gas. Georgina Energy plans to drill to a depth of about 3,200 meters, extendable if gas shows warrant it. A secondary target, the overlying Kanpa and Hussar formations, has shown strong porosity and hydrocarbon shows in earlier drilling but has not been fully tested. The company points to the Bach Ho field, a fractured-basement discovery offshore Vietnam that has produced for more than 40 years and peaked at 1.6 billion cubic feet of gas equivalent a day, as a comparison for what fractured basement reservoirs elsewhere have delivered.
A $152 billion resource estimate, unrisked
An independent geological report dated February 1, 2026, from competent person Maki Petkovski put Hussar's net attributable 2U prospective resources at 283 billion cubic feet of helium, 315 billion cubic feet of hydrogen and 2.93 trillion cubic feet of hydrocarbon gas. At prices of $450 per thousand cubic feet of helium, $2.65 per kilogram of hydrogen and $8 per thousand cubic feet of gas, the company calculates a combined in-situ value of about $152 billion. The figures are unrisked prospective resources, exclude production and transport costs, and carry no assurance that any of the gas will be commercially produced.
CEO Anthony Hamilton said the survey, originally planned for after drilling, will now also feed into planning for full-field development if the prospect proves commercial.
