The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, was a strategic reserve of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, which once held over 1 billion cubic meters (about 170,000,000 kg) of

helium Helium (from ) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, non-toxic, inert gas, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is ...

gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about northwest of

Amarillo, Texas Amarillo ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for "yellow") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Potter County, Texas, Potter County, though most of the southern half of the city extends into Randall County, Texas, Randall County ...

, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome reservoir. The reserve was established with the enactment of the

Helium Act of 1925 Helium Act of 1925 is a United States Statutes at Large, United States statute drafted for the purpose of conservation, exploration, and procurement of helium gas. As since amended, it is currently codified beginning at section 167 of Title 50 of ...

. The strategic supply provisioned the

noble gas The noble gases (historically the inert gases, sometimes referred to as aerogens) are the members of Group (periodic table), group 18 of the periodic table: helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), radon (Rn) and, in some ...

for

airship An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying powered aircraft, under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the ...

s, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

and

Space Race The Space Race (, ) was a 20th-century competition between the Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between t ...

. The facilities were located close to the Hugoton and other

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

fields in southwest Kansas and the panhandle of Oklahoma, plus the Panhandle Field in Texas. These fields contained natural gas with unusually high percentages of helium—from 0.3% to 2.7%—and constitute the United States' largest helium source. The helium is separated as a byproduct from the produced natural gas. After the Helium Acts Amendments of 1960 (Public Law 86–666), the U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a pipeline from Bushton, Kansas, to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field. This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified. By 1995, a billion cubic metres of the gas had been collected, and the reserve was US$1.4 billion in debt, prompting

Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...

to begin phasing out the reserve in 1996. The resulting Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (Public Law 104–273) directed the

Department of the Interior The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources. It also administers programs relatin ...

to start selling off the reserve by 2005. Government sales flooded the market with cheap helium, causing much of the private helium industry to shut down; the facility remained in government hands. The Helium Stewardship Act of 2013 mandated higher prices but a continued selldown to remaining by October 1, 2018, which was achieved with auctions. It also set a deadline of September, 30, 2021 for sale of the reserve. The

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands, U.S. federal lands. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the BLM oversees more than of land, or one ...

(BLM) transferred the reserve to the

General Services Administration The General Services Administration (GSA) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the United States government established in 1949 to help manage and support the basic functioning of federal agencies. G ...

(GSA) as surplus property, but a 2022 auction failed to finalize a sale. On June 22, 2023, the GSA announced a new auction of the facilities and remaining helium. The auction of the last helium assets was due to take place in November, 2023. Though the last of the Cliffside reserve was to be sold by November 2023, more natural gas was discovered at the site than was previously known, and the Bureau of Land Management extended the auction to January 25, 2024 to allow for increased bids. In 2024 the remaining reserve was sold to the highest bidder, Messer Group.

Notes

References

External links

Federal Helium ProgramHelium, when will it run out?Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship Act (H.R. 527) October 2013
*

Historic American Engineering Record Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS). It administers three programs established to document historic places in the United States: Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American E ...

(HAER) documentation: ** ** ** {{Coord, 35.352, N, 101.991, W, display=title, format=dms 1925 establishments in the United States Buildings and structures in Potter County, Texas Helium Historic American Engineering Record in Texas Strategic reserves of the United States United States Bureau of Mines

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links