Georgina Energy has finished a batch of civil engineering work at its Hussar prospect in Western Australia's Officer Basin, moving the site closer to a drilling test for helium, hydrogen and natural gas.
Contractors have set the 20-inch conductor pipe, which will be cemented into the 26-inch hole opening once drilling starts. The water well on site is drilled and delivering a steady flow, and the drilling and camp pads have been graveled, rolled and compacted.
The Hussar airstrip, extended to 1,400 meters for medevac flights and crew changes, has been rolled and compacted, and a low spot prone to waterlogging has been graveled. Crews are also carting gravel to the main access road to fix several low spots that flood. Georgina Energy said the remaining pre-drilling site work is expected to finish shortly.
A large, untested subsalt target
The Hussar prospect, held under Exploration Permit 513, covers 330 square kilometers of areal closure at the 3U level, which the company says makes it one of the largest untested subsalt helium, hydrogen and hydrocarbon prospects onshore Australia. The target sits beneath a salt layer, so the well has to drill through the salt to reach the reservoir rock below.
An Independent Geological Report dated 1 February 2026, prepared by Competent Person Maki Petkovski, certified unrisked 2U Prospective Resources, under SPE PRMS standards, of 283 billion cubic feet of helium, 315 billion cubic feet of hydrogen and 2.93 trillion cubic feet of hydrocarbon gas net to Georgina Energy. At the company's assumed prices of $450 per thousand cubic feet for helium, $2.65 per kilogram for hydrogen and $8 per thousand cubic feet for hydrocarbon gas, that resource equates to a combined unrisked in-situ value of about $152 billion. Georgina Energy notes the figure excludes production, separation and transport costs, and that there is no certainty any of the resource will be commercially recovered.
Drilling plan
The well is designed to test subsalt reservoirs, including the Townsend Formation and fractured Neoproterozoic basement rock, to a planned total depth of about 3,200 meters, a figure that could grow depending on the gas shows and reservoir quality the well finds. Georgina Energy points to Vietnam's Bach Ho field, also a fractured basement reservoir, which produced as much as 1.6 billion cubic feet of gas equivalent a day at its peak and has been in continuous production for more than 40 years. A secondary target sits in the overlying Kanpa and Hussar formations, which have not been fully tested but showed strong porosity and gas shows during earlier drilling.
Chief executive Anthony Hamilton said the setting of the conductor "will save a lot of time" once the Ensign 970 rig reaches the site to begin drilling.
