QIMC Maps a 126.5-Kilometre Seismic Plan Across Three Provinces

A seismic crew from Echo Seismic Ltd. completed Quebec Innovative Materials' survey of Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, in mid-October. The company has already named the crew's next job: its Quebec properties, then Ontario.

The Nova Scotia survey ran to 63.7 line-kilometres, against about 50 planned, and the company said on October 14 that the extra lines followed new hot zones found while the work was under way. Every line now sits with Earth Signal Processing Ltd. in Calgary.

Since then the momentum has continued, with one more seismic plan and one more encouraging Nova Scotia data set. On October 20 it added a line in Ontario to the survey already planned in Quebec. On October 26 it reported a thermogenic gas signature at almost every new soil station inside the Nova Scotia grid. The company's own tally of completed and planned seismic across the three provinces is about 126.5 line-kilometres.

One district, several kinds of evidence

QIMC is a Canadian Securities Exchange-listed explorer for natural hydrogen and helium in eastern Canada. Natural hydrogen is hydrogen gas generated underground by reactions between rock and water, as opposed to hydrogen made in a plant from natural gas or by electrolysis. There is no resource or reserve category for it in Canada, so the work is measured by the data an explorer gathers and what that data points to.

In Nova Scotia that data now comes in mutually reinforcing layers, all in one corridor from Apple River to Port Greville.

The company says the system has become more consistent with each set: 86 per cent of the first samples carried the wet thermogenic signature, and 145 of 147 of the second. "The system is not fading at its edges; it is getting more consistent," Mr. Karagiannidis said on October 26. Thermogenic gas forms when organic matter is cooked at depth, and the company reads its fingerprint in shallow soil as the sign of a deeper source. The second set was sampled entirely inside the seismic grid.

The helium benchmark has a stated basis. Air carries about 5.240 ppmv of helium, and on September 22 the company published a regional background of 5.40 ppmv for the district and set its anomaly threshold at 5.48 ppmv. Readings a few hundredths above background, repeated along a line, are the scale at which soil-gas helium is read, because the gas is light and rises along faults.

The structural work gives that chemistry an address. Professor Marc Richer-Laflèche of INRS, the Quebec research institute, led the September interpretation as the qualified person. The company called the buried magnetic body a likely deep source of the surface degassing and said its depth estimates are model-dependent.

DDH-26-05 is where gas has come up from depth. A headspace reading measures the gas trapped in a sealed sample jar, so it gives a concentration. The company described the gas reaching surface as a qualitative operational observation, separate from a flow or pressure test. Its October 14 release lists continued testing at the hole as a next step.

Across the programme the company cites more than 10,000 soil-gas samples and over 3,500 metres of drill core from five Nova Scotia holes.

Processing is the step that joins the layers

Two-dimensional seismic sends sound into the ground along a line and records the echoes, producing a cross-section of rock layers and faults. Raw field records are noisy, and processing is the work of turning them into a section a geologist can interpret.

Earth Signal was engaged on October 1, when the company said the firm had processed more than 27,600 two-dimensional lines in over 63 countries since 2000, including work in the Cumberland Basin. The plan in that release is to merge the processed sections with the soil-gas, gravity, magnetic and drill data, which in the company's words moves it from exploration into planning a hydrogen, helium and multi-gas pilot production pathway.

Chief executive John Karagiannidis put the logic in one line on October 1: "data drives our pilot production pathway."

The company is precise about the limits of the tool. Its October 1 release states that seismic images and soil-gas anomalies do not establish the presence, size or commercial viability of a gas accumulation, and that seismic processing does not measure hydrogen or helium concentrations, formation pressure, sustained flow or recoverable volumes. Further drilling and subsurface testing would be required, it says. What processed seismic can do is place a fault, a seal or a trap at depth and show whether the surface anomalies line up with them. That is the step the soil-gas and helium work was designed to feed.

Every one of the October 26 soil-gas lines lies inside the seismic footprint, and DDH-26-05 ties into the Bennett Hill seismic line, according to the October 14 release. Once the sections arrive, each surface anomaly and the gas event in the hole can be read against a processed image of the ground beneath them.

Neither Earth Signal nor the company has given a completion date for the processing.

The wider search gives that sequence context. On January 16, 2025 the US Geological Survey published its first national map of potential for geologic hydrogen, scoring the lower 48 states on three conditions: hydrogen sources, reservoir rocks and seals to trap the gas. The map does not cover Nova Scotia. Its three conditions are the ones QIMC's processed sections and drilling are meant to test, so it serves as a yardstick for the method rather than for this ground.

The Témiscamingue graben is the next survey

A graben is a block of the earth's crust that has dropped between two faults, and the Témiscamingue graben straddles the Quebec and Ontario border around Lake Timiskaming. QIMC has explored for natural hydrogen on both sides.

The seismic there is planned and has not been acquired. The October 20 release sets out 36 kilometres in the Ville-Marie and St-Bruno-de-Guigues area of Quebec.

In Ontario it adds Line 5, 26.8 kilometres in three segments running from the provincial border through Hilliard, Armstrong and Brethour townships. The two plans come to about 63 kilometres, close to the Nova Scotia total.

The company gave its reasons for Line 5 in some detail. The corridor carries the highest soil-gas hydrogen readings it has recorded in the Ontario part of the graben. Large magnetic anomalies along it are interpreted as Nipissing mafic dykes and sills, iron-rich intrusive rocks the company treats as a possible hydrogen source. The line crosses Ordovician and Silurian sedimentary cover that may act as a seal. In Mr. Karagiannidis's words, Line 5 "satisfies every criterion in our targeting model at once."

The method matches Nova Scotia's. Echo Seismic is to acquire the data with the same vibroseis parameters, a technique that uses truck-mounted plates to vibrate the ground, run along existing roads and rights-of-way. Earth Signal is to process it. The company says the programme involves no drilling, blasting or hydraulic fracturing, and that it is consulting the municipalities and First Nations in the area, including Timiskaming First Nation.

No acquisition dates were given. The next step named on October 20 is moving the Echo crew from Nova Scotia to Quebec.

C$14.1 million at the last balance sheet

The programme is backed by a strengthened balance sheet, built on a spring placement. The interim financial statements for the nine months ended June 30, 2026 are the latest QIMC has filed, and they show cash and cash equivalents of C$14,127,210 at June 30, 2026.

The placement's gross proceeds exceed the C$13.3 million rise in cash between September 30, 2025 and June 30, 2026.

Note 1 of those statements says the company's circumstances indicate "a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt" on its ability to continue as a going concern. The note ties that uncertainty to the company not yet having earned a profit, and says continuing depends on raising financing and on its exploration results. The Nova Scotia seismic, the September soil-gas lines and the processing contract all fall after that balance-sheet date. They will first appear in the annual statements for the fiscal year that ended in September, which a venture issuer must file within 120 days.

Where the shares trade

The shares were trading at C$0.38 at midday on November 3, 2026, down 3.80 per cent, according to 15-minute delayed QuoteMedia market data. At that price the June 30 share count is worth about C$59.3 million.

QIMC also trades on the OTCQB as QIMCF and in Frankfurt under the symbol 7FJ, according to the boilerplate of its October 20 release; the Frankfurt identifiers are in Key numbers.

Eight weeks of field data on one grid

From September 1 to October 26 the company put a gas-bearing drill hole, fault-bound helium zones, two soil-gas sets and a completed seismic survey onto one Nova Scotia grid. The survey came in 27 per cent longer than planned. Mr. Karagiannidis summed up the October 14 release in five words: "This district keeps getting bigger."

The next catalyst in Nova Scotia is Earth Signal's processed sections, which the company will merge with its field data to plan a pilot production pathway, while the Echo crew heads for the Témiscamingue graben.