The Perth-based company yesterday said under the farm-out deal, He Nuclear will fund an additional pre-drilling seismic and an exploration well in each of the Mt Kitty and Magee prospects.

“He Nuclear will fund the program at the 50% level to earn a 25% participating interest in each of the prospects and a small area of surrounding acreage, leaving room for other parties to potentially farm-in to parts of the remaining acreage in the exploration permits concerned,” Central said.

The company said the exploration concept is based on the Heavitree Quartzite, a formation immediately under the Gillen Salt Member of the Bitter Springs Group in the southern Amadeus Basin.

The target formation has only been drilled once before.

The Magee-1 well was drilled by Pacific Oil and Gas in 1992 to a total depth of 2400m. It encountered gaseous hydrocarbons with “wet fractions” and a concentration of helium over 6%, about 20 times the usual minimum required for commercial extraction.

The Mt Kitty Prospect has interpreted closure of over 500 square kilometres. Central said independent geologists have estimated high potentially recoverable resources of 1.7 trillion cubic feet of gas there, which at 6% helium would contain over 100 billion cubic feet of helium.

Helium is used as a cooling medium in 4G pebble bed nuclear reactors, cryogenics, superconductor research, medical, deep water and missile guidance applications.