HyTerra Ltd has drilled three wells back-to-back between April and July 2025 at the Nemaha Project in Kansas, USA. All three wells were drilled on time, on budget, and with no Health and Safety (HSE) incidents. This exploration programme’s funding is sourced from an investment in the company by Fortescue Future Industries Technologies Pty Ltd.
Benjamin Mee, HyTerra Executive Director, said: “The preliminary McCoy 1 results are encouraging and I am glad we collected conventional core for analysis. Now we will clean up the wellbore immediately and install downhole monitoring equipment. This is a proactive step and a crucial one to support the design of initial testing plans. We remain safe, data-driven, and methodical in our approach to analysis and subsurface integration. That is the HyTerra way.”
McCoy 1 Operations Murfin Rig 116 spudded McCoy 1 at 12:30 pm on 10 July 2025 (Kansas time) and was drilled to a total depth of 5562 ft m (1695 m) on time, on budget, with no HSE incidents. The wireline logging operations have been completed. This is the deepest well the company has drilled to date. The well drilled through approximately 1430 ft (435 m) of sedimentary rocks and 4132 ft (1260 m) of Pre-Cambrian basement. Elevated hydrogen and helium were detected while drilling via the mud gas system, with samples currently being sent to an independent laboratory (Isotech Laboratories Inc.) for verification and quantification at which time the results will be released to the market.
McCoy 1 is a major milestone as the company moves away from ‘twinning’ historical wells to selecting well locations based on geological understanding, proprietary geophysical data, and in house IP. The well site is located around 9 km southeast of Sue Duroche 1, 2, and 3 drilled in 2008, 2009, and 2025, respectively. McCoy 1 drilled into the same geological play as Sue Duroche 3 within a fault block defined by seismic. Sue Duroche 3 reported hydrogen concentrations of up to 96% and helium concentrations up to 5%. The company has 3116 contiguous net acres around the McCoy 1 well site right next to the Interstate Highway (I70), which is a major arterial route crossing the US, stretching for ~3500 km in a West-East direction across 10 states.
Learnings from the previous two wells have been incorporated into the design of McCoy 1, with a modified well design providing cost and efficiency benefits. This has enabled the well to be drilled deeper than the previous two wells and allowed the collection of conventional core for detailed analysis in combination with Sue Duroche 3's side wall cores.
Operations Lookahead
HyTerra is continuing its deliberate, data driven de-risking strategy by converting exploration wells with encouraging results to appraisal wells via a separate workover rig. This is required to evaluate flow test viability, which is a crucial step to inform testing plans. Each of Sue Duroche 3 and Blythe 13-20 were converted straight away to appraisal wells. Similarly for McCoy 1, a workover rig is expected in coming days to immediately convert the McCoy 1 exploration well to an appraisal well by actively cleaning the well up and installing downhole monitoring equipment. The appraisal data from Sue Duroche 3 and McCoy 1 that drilled into the same geological play will be integrated into informing any future testing plans.
Josh Whitcombe, HyTerra VP Development and Operations, said: “It is great to see our Kansas based operational team doing such a great job at safely and efficiently implementing our drilling and well intervention programme. To be able to complete a programme of three wells and multiple work over rig visits in such a short time, without incident, is a testament to our team and operational excellence.”