Last U.S. Federal Helium Reserve is running out

Last U.S. Federal Helium Reserve, near Amarillo, is running out

Anna M. Tinsley
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
July 16, 2011

AMARILLO -- Deep beneath the dry, dusty ground outside this Panhandle city lies something lighter than air: helium.

But the supply of the gas that inflates balloons, cools MRI machines and detects leaks in NASA space shuttle fuel tanks isn't infinite.

There's only so much helium in the world, and some fear that a shortage is coming.

"Once it's used up, it's gone," said Rasika Dias, professor and chairman of the chemistry and biochemistry department at the University of Texas at Arlington. "What we have is what we have."

Still, nearly two dozen underground wells about 15 miles northwest of Amarillo work round the clock to retrieve helium and pump it to customers connected to a nearly 450-mile pipeline that stretches from the Panhandle through Oklahoma and to Kansas.

This site -- thousands of acres where cows and antelope roam -- is home to underground gas fields and the country's only Federal Helium Reserve.

More than one-third of the world's helium supply comes from this site, including nearly half of the U.S. supply.

But even helium officials in Amarillo say that after more than a half-century of steadily providing the world with helium, the facility's production days are numbered.

"There is just a finite amount of helium out here," said Leslie Theiss, field office manager for the Bureau of Land Management's Amarillo field office. "There's only so much we can do.

"The clock is winding down on this place."

That seems to be what the government wanted more than a decade ago, when Congress passed the Helium Privatization Act of 1996, calling on reserve officials to sell off most of their helium by 2015. The latest projections show that all the helium won't be sold on time, but it could be gone by 2020.

Limited amount

Helium is commonly used by NASA and the Defense Department and has applications including medical research and computer chip manufacturing.

But inhaling the gas to temporarily change the sound of a person's voice could someday be a thing of the past. Some say even private supplies could run out in 25 to 100 years -- and no known substance on Earth can replace helium.

Naturally generating more helium takes time, as scientists say helium comes from the decay of radioactive elements.

"The Earth is 4.7 billion years old, and it has taken that long to accumulate our helium reserves, which we will dissipate in about 100 years," Nobel Prize-winning scientist Robert Richardson, who has studied the potential helium shortage, has said.

Government uses

The government started regulating helium around 1925, when officials realized during World War I that the gas was a safe alternative to hydrogen for use in various aircraft. Federal officials wanted to make sure they had adequate supplies of the gas for medical purposes, research and defense, so they created the Federal Helium Program.

The gas was first produced in Clay County, but attention quickly shifted to Fort Worth, which at one time provided the world's only source of helium, according to the Texas State Historical Association.

A large helium extraction plant was built in Fort Worth east of what is now Meacham Airport.

During World War I, military airships traveled to a mooring station to refill gas bags and pick up supplies. Helium was used mainly to lift lighter aircraft, association records show.

But the Fort Worth plant closed in 1929 after supplies were depleted, and attention shifted to areas of Texas where the gas could still be found, according to the association.

The government built a helium-extraction plant, since closed, near Amarillo, and by the 1930s, the Bureau of Mines acquired the current Cliffside helium field near Amarillo.

"People have been dependent on our place out here for years," Theiss said. "We tell them there's a finite amount ... and folks need to be looking for other supplies."

Amarillo plant

At the Cliffside facility, workers monitor half a dozen computer screens that track helium retrieval.

This month, 23 of the 28 underground wells are working, said Deward Cawthon, plant supervisor.

The wells, which look like oil and gas well heads, pull helium, nitrogen and methane from the reserve.

The gases go through a process that includes a "dryer" to remove carbon dioxide and a "cold box" that reaches temperatures as low as minus 268 degrees to liquefy most of the methane and nitrogen and let the helium pass into the pipeline in a gas form, Cawthon said.

The helium in the pipeline, about 80 percent pure, is bought by companies along the pipeline that purify the gas to about 99.9 percent before selling it to other users, Cawthon said.

"When we opened the reserve years ago, we had about 32 billion cubic feet of helium at our spot," Theiss said. "We're down to about 18 billion cubic feet now."

That's more than Congress calculated the reserve should have at this point.

Supply and demand

In the 1990s, a controversy erupted as the reserve accumulated a sizable stockpile of helium when about 10 percent of the amount mined was being sold.

Critics said there was more private demand than federal need for helium. Government officials said it was time for private industry to take over the helium business.

"Once, our defense and aviation industries had a strong need for helium, and the nation lacked a market to supply it," President Bill Clinton said in 1996 when he signed the bill to sell the helium. "Today, over 90 percent of U.S. helium needs are met by private producers and suppliers.

"A government-operated program is no longer needed."

Congress developed a plan to sell off all the spare helium by Jan. 1, 2015.

As part of that plan, the reserve offers more than 2 billion cubic feet of helium for sale each year. Some years, all of it is sold. Other years, such as when the economy is tighter, some goes unsold.

The upshot is that the reserve won't deplete its supply by 2015.

Theiss and others say they don't know how the Federal Reserve will work after 2015 because the privatization act calls for the facility to be mostly empty by then.

"It appears [Congress] believed this would be a nice, clean process -- sell it all and go away, like a fire sale. It wasn't that neat," she said. "We don't know if they want us to keep producing. ... We don't know what we are supposed to do.

"Congress has to decide what to do," she said. "We know we're not the biggest fish for ([Congress] to fry right now, with the debt ceiling and everything else they are dealing with. But we would like to know what will happen."

Undervalued gas

Government officials say an undetermined amount of helium is available through private industry and is being processed in southwest Wyoming and in overseas sites including Australia, the Middle East and Russia.

The U.S. could eventually depend on those areas for helium, which has drawn criticism.

"Selling off the helium reserve ... has adversely affected critical users of helium and is not in the best interest of U.S. taxpayers or the country," said a study last year by Richardson and Chip Groat, a University of Texas at Austin professor in the energy and earth resources department.

"If this path continues to be followed, within the next 10 to 15 years, the United States will become a net importer of helium whose principal foreign sources of helium will be in the Middle East and Russia."

Prices in the U.S. continue rising -- this year, federal crude helium costs $75 per thousand cubic feet compared with $64.75 in 2010.

Helium recovery

Researchers at UTA are accustomed to using liquid helium in their work, primarily cooling chemical compounds and magnets in instruments similar to MRI machines.

Years ago, researchers looked at the cost and feasibility of buying a helium liquefaction system to let them recycle and reuse the helium they purchase, but the only systems available were large-scale, mostly $1 million versions.

This year, when the price of 100 liquid liters of helium was about $1,100, up from $947 last year, UTA's Dias said it was time to do something.

"Even without a serious shortage, the prices are going up," Dias said. "Right now we can get it, but I think we will see prices go up every year."

UTA research engineer Charles Savage, using a liquefier that the university bought, is working to build a system to retrieve and liquefy used helium gas so it can be used again. He hopes to have the system running by year's end.

The system, which will likely cost about $150,000 to build, is an important precaution, he said.

"No one knows what's going to happen in two or three years, when the government gets out of the business," Savage said. "If we don't get helium when we need it, we will be in trouble."

Meanwhile unspecified helium suppliers are funding groups claiming that peak helium does not exist, that there is enough supply for five centuries and though 97% of experts say this is a problem, they promote the idea that this is a split issue. Furthermore they intend to petition Congress to get the laws of physics overturned as unconstitutional

j/k

Our gov't is pushing to get rid of it? If helium is finite then why would the gov't sell off to private investors? No more balloons. No more funny voices.