Botala CBM reports positive gas desorption testing

Botala Energy’s Serowe coal bed methane (CBM) project located in the Central Kalahari Karoo Basin has reported positive results for gas desorption testing.

According to the company’s technical progress update, the initial results of the ongoing gas desorption testing are promising.

The gas desorption testing is a three-stage programme designed to determine the amount of gas held within a gram of coal and the coals’ ability to release the gas under flowing conditions in production.

“We are very pleased with the initial gas desorption testing. Based on the initial results there is strong potential that we may exceed our target rate of 2.4 scc/g which was used previously in the certification process. ese results are in line with gas desorption rates that you would expect in Queensland (Australia) and gives us strong confidence in our CBM Project as we rapidly advance towards development,” said Botala Chief

Executive Officer, Kris Martinick. Botala is currently conducting analysis which include gas desorption, gas composition using GCMS to establish gas content and gas concentration, mineralogy and petrography to determine porosity, permeability, vitrinite reflectance, mineralogy, ash and moisture content.

Martinick said the data would form a new integrated mapping exercise, which will be used as input to the updated resource certification planned for later in 2024 post the Project Pitse commercial flow-testing.

“Whilst the immediate focus of drilling is concentrated on the 3 coal seams, the intervening shales and siltstones are also expected to contribute gas content. is will be the subject of a later review.

e results of this work will be used in optimising the design of the stimulation and injection testing in the two most suitable wells - Serowe 3-4B and Serowe 3-5B, based on data from the 4 recent production wells,” said Martinick. He said the process will provide certified gas production rates from each of the three coal seams.