Gold Hydrogen Achieves Australian First by Flowing, Purifying and Bottling Helium at Ramsay 1

Gold Hydrogen has announced a significant operational milestone at its Ramsay Project on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula, successfully flowing helium to surface, separating it from the gas stream, purifying it and capturing it in cylinders during the ongoing Ramsay 1 flow testing campaign. According to the company, this is the first time helium has been concentrated, purified and bottled on Australian soil since the closure of the country's only helium production plant at Darwin in late 2023. 

The Ramsay 1 program was specifically designed as a helium-focused flow test ahead of the larger zonal testing campaigns planned for Ramsay 2 and Ramsay 3. Using a helium purification system supplied by Canada's Quantum Technology Corporation, the company successfully separated helium from the well's gas stream and demonstrated proof-of-concept applications, including gas bottling and inflating an industrial balloon. 

During testing, Gold Hydrogen reported air-corrected helium concentrations exceeding 30% at peak and stabilised concentrations of 19% prior to purification. The recovered gas stream consisted predominantly of helium, nitrogen and naturally occurring hydrogen, consistent with previous gas compositions reported from the Ramsay Project. The current field measurements remain subject to confirmation through independent laboratory analysis. 

The flow test was conducted using Ramsay 1's designed pumping capacity of up to 2,000 barrels of fluid and gas per day. The company noted that the upcoming Ramsay 3 program has been engineered to operate at rates of up to 20,000 barrels per day, allowing the knowledge gained from the current campaign to support equipment optimisation and operational planning before higher-capacity testing begins. 

Beyond the immediate testing objectives, Gold Hydrogen believes the successful operation of the purification system provides valuable engineering data that may accelerate future commercialisation planning. Vendor design work for a modular commercial helium plant has already been completed and is expected to be finalised following the Ramsay 3 testing program. The company also plans to dispatch gas samples for compositional and isotopic analysis, including helium-3, through collaborations with CSIRO and the University of Oxford. 

Ramsay 1 will now be converted into a reinjection well as the broader 2026 testing campaign progresses toward zonal flow testing at Ramsay 2 and Ramsay 3. Data generated from the program will contribute to a future contingent resource assessment covering the wider Ramsay Project. 

While the company emphasised that the current work represents a pilot-scale equipment and process validation rather than commercial production, the successful separation and purification of helium under field conditions marks an important technical milestone for the project. 

Full press release can be found here.