Royal Helium Ltd. announced its initial set of development plans for 2024. With a focus on high grading the existing drilled fields in Saskatchewan, Royal's development efforts will be centred on the completion and testing of existing wells in the Val Marie, Ogema and Steveville properties and new drilling on the 40 Mile project in Alberta. Val Marie, Saskatchewan: The Val Marie project in southwestern Saskatchewan is a 27,000-acre project which is 100% owned by Royal under a 21-year lease.

The site of the most recent well drilled in the portfolio, the Val Marie-1 well is awaiting completion and testing of the zones of interest encountered in the 2022 drill program. The Val Marie-1 helium exploration well was drilled to a total depth of 2,596 metres. Mass spectrometer and gas chromatography readings during drilling encountered significant helium shows with multiple intervals ranging from 5 to 10 meters in thickness within the Devonian and the Cambrian formations.

Val Marie-1 returned the higher background level helium results that Royal has encountered to date, including the Steveville field, which is now on production through Royal's 100% owned helium processing facility. Royal will be completing and flow testing of these stacked shows in the Devonian and Cambrian horizons. The Val Marie field sits upon the Val Marie Arch on the northern flank of the Bowdoin Dome.

One of the earliest projects in the Royal portfolio, Val Marie has long been a high priority field. The Bowdoin Dome is thought to be the dominant structure allowing the migration of helium into southwestern Saskatchewan reservoirs. Extensive regional mapping and geophysical work has been done with the tremendous amount of new deep well data available to Royal's technical team, which has enabled the team to define several additional drilling prospects on their lands in SW Saskatchewan.

Ogema, Saskatchewan: The Ogema project in south central Saskatchewan comprises more than 60,000 acres and is home to the eastern most helium wells drilled in Saskatchewan. Drilled and partially tested in 2021, upon receiving legislative permitting changes in 2023, Royal is planning to perforate and test the Ordovician Red River formation within the wellbore with the view of making a production and plant decision. The Red River formation in south central and southeastern Saskatchewan has long been a prolific oil and gas producing formation that boasts helium prospectivity with the numerous shows across the province.

This formation has returned the highest concentrations of helium historically, with test results as high as 2.45%. Steveville, Alberta: In 2021, Royal drilled three wells at the Steveville helium project in southeastern Alberta. The processing facility is being fed by highly productive Devonian horizons that will provide material cash flow to Royal through the offtake agreements that it has in place with one of the large space exploration companies in the world.

While Steveville-1 well was not contemplated for production after the initial completions testing, subsequent geological review completed since August of 2022 has identified a potentially productive zone remaining behind pipe at Steveville-1. Royal intends to test this new zone. If successful, the addition of a third well feeding the Steveville helium facility can increase the productive life of the current Steveville project by as much as 33%. While it will not increase the throughput, as maximum capacity at the facility is achieved with the two tied-in wells, Royal has the ability to tie-in the third well to the facility which will allow for a production buffer if either of the two current production wells move offline for periodic maintenance.

Further, it will allow for a lower production rate from each of the wells to extend the current engineered reserve life of 9 years significantly, while not sacrificing the feed rate at the facility. 40-Mile, Alberta: In 2023, Royal acquired its newest project area in southern Alberta. Acquired under a seismic option agreement with an independent private vendor, the 40 Mile project is comprised of 7,000 acres and boasts one historic well that was drilled, flow tested and assayed.

This well flowed at exceptionally high rates during initial testing and returned helium concentrations exceeding anything that Royal has received to date. Royal completed seismic work at 40 Mile in 2022 and 2023 and has multiple seismically defined drill targets across multiple prospective zones. It is intended that drilling on the 40 Mile project will commence in the second half of 2024.