Overview of the inert gas in the North American country
Map showing helium-rich gas fields and helium processing plants in the United States, 2012. From USGS.
Helium production in the United States totaled 73 million cubic meters in 2014. The US was the world's largest helium producer, providing 40 percent of world supply. In addition, the US federal government sold 30 million cubic meters from storage. Other major helium producers were Algeria and Qatar.
All commercial helium is recovered from natural gas. Helium usually makes up a minuscule portion of natural gas, but can make up as much as 10 percent of natural gas in some fields. A helium content of 0.3 percent or more is considered necessary for commercial helium extraction.[1] In 2012, helium was recovered at 16 extraction plants, from gas wells in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming. One extraction plant in Utah was idle in 2012.
History
Helium production and storage in the United States, 1940-2014 (data from USGS)
In 1903, an oil exploration well at Dexter, Kansas, produced a gas that would not burn. Kansas state geologist Erasmus Haworth took samples of the gas back to the University of Kansas at Lawrence where chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland discovered that gas contained 1.84 percent helium.[2][3][4][5] This led to further discoveries of helium-bearing natural gas in Kansas.
The military was interested in helium for balloons and dirigibles. The US Army built the first helium extraction plant in 1915 at Petrolia, Texas, where a large natural gas field averaged nearly 1 percent helium.[6] The United States Navy established three experimental helium plants during World War I, to recover enough helium to supply barrage balloons with the non-flammable, lighter-than-air gas. Two of the experimental plants were north of Fort Worth, Texas, and recovered helium from natural gas piped in from the Petrolia oil field in Clay County, Texas.[7]
The Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, which provided for oil and gas leasing on federal land, reserved all helium contained in natural gas on federal land to the government.[8] This was followed by the Helium Act of 1925, which banned the export of helium, "a mineral resource pertaining to the national defense."[9] However, after the loss of the USSAkron in 1933 and the USSMacon in 1935, military use of helium declined significantly. A lease agreement was reached in 1936 with the Goodyear–Zeppelin Corporation, providing helium for commercial aviation, and in 1937 Congress amended the Helium Act to allow for sale of helium produced in excess of U.S. governmental needs.[10] The biggest potential customer, however, was Nazi Germany, which wanted to replace the hydrogen responsible for the Hindenburg disaster with non-flammable helium. A contract for 18million cubic feet (510,000m3) of helium was approved, but Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes blocked export of the gas due to its potential for military use.[11]
During World War II, military demand for helium rose, so the federal government built a number of new helium extraction plants. One such plant was at Shiprock, New Mexico, to recover helium from gas at the Rattlesnake Field. Gas from the Rattlesnake field, like that of a number of other fields in the Four Corners area, contained mostly nitrogen and very little hydrocarbons, and was produced exclusively for the helium.[12]
The Helium Acts Amendments of 1960 (Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States)86–777) empowered the U.S. Bureau of Mines to arrange for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. The Bureau also built a 425-mile (684km) pipeline from Bushton, Kansas, to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field, near Amarillo, Texas. The crude helium (50 percent to 80 percent helium) was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified.[13]
By 1995, a billion cubic meters of the gas had been stored, but the reserve was US$1.4billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to phase out the reserve.[14] The resulting "Helium Privatization Act of 1996"[15] (Public Law 104–273) directed the United States Department of the Interior to empty the reserve.[16] Sales to government and government contractor began in 1998. Sales to the open market began in 2003. The sales program paid the indebtedness, and is still selling helium.
Geology
All commercial production of helium comes from natural gas. There are two basic types of commercial helium deposits: natural gas produced primarily for the hydrocarbon content, typically containing less than 3 percent helium; and gas with little or no hydrocarbons, produced solely for the helium, which typically makes up between 5 and 10 percent of the gas. Although natural gas in which helium is only a byproduct contains a much lower percentage of helium, historically it has supplied the most helium.
Most geologists believe that the majority of helium in natural gas derives from radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, either from radioactive black shales, or granitoid basement rock. Granite and related rocks tend to contain more uranium and thorium than other rock types. However, some[who?] believe that the helium is largely primordial.
Unusual geological conditions are considered necessary for commercial concentrations of helium in natural gas. Helium accumulations are commonly in structural closures overlying bedrock highs. Faults, fractures, and igneous intrusives are regarded by some geologists as important pathways for helium to migrate upward into the sedimentary section. The atomic radius of helium is so small that shale, which is effective in trapping methane, allows the helium to migrate upward through the shale pores. Nonporous caprock such as halite (rock salt) or anhydrite is more effective in trapping helium. Helium deposits occur mostly in Paleozoic rocks.
High helium content of natural gas is accompanied by high contents of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The percentage of nitrogen is usually 10 to 20 times that of helium, so that natural gas with 5 percent or more helium may have little or no methane. A representative sample from the Pinta Dome in Apache County, Arizona, for instance, has 8.3 percent helium, 89.9 percent nitrogen, 1 percent carbon dioxide, and only 0.1 percent methane. In such cases, the gas is produced solely for its helium content.[17]
In the early 20th century, the highest production and largest known reserves of helium were in the gases produced for their hydrocarbon content. The most important of these were the Hugoton, Panhandle, Greenwood, and Keyes fields, all located in western Kansas, and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. The Hugoton and Panhandle fields are particularly large, covering thousands of square miles. The helium content of the gas varies greatly within some fields. In the Panhandle field, helium content is highest, up to 1.3 percent or more, along the updip southwest edge, and lowest, 0.1 percent along the northeast edge.[18]
By 2003, the natural gas fields of the Great Plains of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, still held important reserves, but out of 100 BCF of total measured helium reserves in the US, 61 BCF was contained in the Riley Ridge field of western Wyoming, a gas deposit produced for its carbon dioxide content.[19]
The Four Corners area of the southwest US has a number of gas fields containing 5 to 10 percent helium and large percentages of nitrogen, with little or no hydrocarbons. The fields are associated with igneous intrusions. One field, Dineh-bi-Keyah in Arizona, produced oil from a fractured sill. The other fields have no associated oil.
The Crude Helium Enrichment Unit in the Cliffside Gas Field.
Helium is marketed in two specifications: crude helium, which typically contains 75 percent to 80 percent helium, and Grade A helium, which is 99.995 percent pure.
Storage
A large volume of helium was stored underground in the Cliffside field in the decade following the Helium Act Amendments of 1960. In recent years,[when?] the reserve has been systematically selling its helium. As of 2012[update], the United States National Helium Reserve still accounted for 30 percent of the world's helium.[24] The reserve was expected to run out of helium in 2018.[24]
As of 1October2023[update], the storage was listed as:[25]
Government = 1,855,115 Mcf
Private = 1,491,079 Mcf
Trade
The United States is a major exporter of helium.
For many years the United States produced more than 90% of the commercial helium in the world. In the mid-1990s, a new plant in Arzew, Algeria, began producing 17million cubic meters (600million cubic feet), enough to supply all of Europe's demand.[26] In 2004–2006, two additional plants, one in Ras Laffan, Qatar, and the other in Skikda, Algeria, were built, and Algeria became the second leading producer of helium.[27][28]
In August 2014, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned crude helium from the national reserve at an average price of US$104 per thousand cubic feet of helium content.[29] Grade A helium sold for about $200 per thousand cubic feet, or $7.21 per cubic meter in 2014.
Related Research Articles
Helium is a chemical element; it has symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is the lowest among all the elements, and it does not have a melting point at standard pressures. It is the second-lightest and second most abundant element in the observable universe, after hydrogen. It is present at about 24% of the total elemental mass, which is more than 12 times the mass of all the heavier elements combined. Its abundance is similar to this in both the Sun and Jupiter, because of the very high nuclear binding energy of helium-4, with respect to the next three elements after helium. This helium-4 binding energy also accounts for why it is a product of both nuclear fusion and radioactive decay. The most common isotope of helium in the universe is helium-4, the vast majority of which was formed during the Big Bang. Large amounts of new helium are created by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars.
Natural gas is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane (97%) in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Traces of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and helium are also usually present. Methane is colorless and odorless, and the second largest greenhouse gas contributor to global climate change after carbon dioxide. Because natural gas is odorless, odorizers such as mercaptan are commonly added to it for safety so that leaks can be readily detected.
Oil shale is an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock containing kerogen from which liquid hydrocarbons can be produced. In addition to kerogen, general composition of oil shales constitutes inorganic substance and bitumens. Based on their deposition environment, oil shales are classified as marine, lacustrine and terrestrial oil shales. Oil shales differ from oil-bearing shales, shale deposits that contain petroleum that is sometimes produced from drilled wells. Examples of oil-bearing shales are the Bakken Formation, Pierre Shale, Niobrara Formation, and Eagle Ford Formation. Accordingly, shale oil produced from oil shale should not be confused with tight oil, which is also frequently called shale oil.
The Hubbert peak theory says that for any given geographical area, from an individual oil-producing region to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell-shaped curve. It is one of the primary theories on peak oil.
The abiogenic petroleum origin hypothesis proposes that most of earth's petroleum and natural gas deposits were formed inorganically, commonly known as abiotic oil. Scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports a biogenic origin for most of the world's petroleum deposits. Mainstream theories about the formation of hydrocarbons on earth point to an origin from the decomposition of long-dead organisms, though the existence of hydrocarbons on extraterrestrial bodies like Saturn's moon Titan indicates that hydrocarbons are sometimes naturally produced by inorganic means. A historical overview of theories of the abiogenic origins of hydrocarbons has been published.
Coalbed methane, coalbed gas, or coal seam gas (CSG) is a form of natural gas extracted from coal beds. In recent decades it has become an important source of energy in United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries.
The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, is a strategic reserve of the United States, which once held over 1 billion cubic meters of helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome reservoir. The reserve was established with the enactment of the Helium Act of 1925. The strategic supply provisioned the noble gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Cold War and Space Race.
The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) underlies 1.4 million square kilometres (540,000 sq mi) of Western Canada including southwestern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. This vast sedimentary basin consists of a massive wedge of sedimentary rock extending from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Canadian Shield in the east. This wedge is about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) thick under the Rocky Mountains, but thins to zero at its eastern margins. The WCSB contains one of the world's largest reserves of petroleum and natural gas and supplies much of the North American market, producing more than 450 million cubic metres per day of gas in 2000. It also has huge reserves of coal. Of the provinces and territories within the WCSB, Alberta has most of the oil and gas reserves and almost all of the oil sands.
The Anadarko Basin is a geologic depositional and structural basin centered in the western part of the state of Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle, and extending into southwestern Kansas and southeastern Colorado. The basin covers an area of 50,000 square miles (130,000 km2). By the end of the 20th Century, the Anadarko Basin was producing the largest amount of natural gas in the United States. Notable oil and gas fields within the basin include the Hugoton-Panhandle Gas Field, West Edmond Field, Union City Field and the Elk City Field. The basin is also the only commercial source of iodine in the United States and a major producer of helium.
Natural-gas processing is a range of industrial processes designed to purify raw natural gas by removing contaminants such as solids, water, carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), mercury and higher molecular mass hydrocarbons (condensate) to produce pipeline quality dry natural gas for pipeline distribution and final use. Some of the substances which contaminate natural gas have economic value and are further processed or sold. Hydrocarbons that are liquid at ambient conditions: temperature and pressure (i.e., pentane and heavier) are called natural-gas condensate (sometimes also called natural gasoline or simply condensate).
Hugoton Gas Field is a large natural gas field in the U.S. states of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Its name is derived from the town of Hugoton, Kansas, near which the Hugoton Field was first discovered.
Masterson is an unincorporated community in southern Moore County, Texas, United States of the Texas Panhandle. It lies along the concurrent U.S. Routes 87 and 287, south of the city of Dumas, the county seat of Moore County.
Shale gas in the United States is an available source of unconventional natural gas. Led by new applications of hydraulic fracturing technology and horizontal drilling, development of new sources of shale gas has offset declines in production from conventional gas reservoirs, and has led to major increases in reserves of U.S. natural gas. Largely due to shale gas discoveries, estimated reserves of natural gas in the United States in 2008 were 35% higher than in 2006.
Although production rates were small as of 2013, the volume of technically recoverable unconventional shale gas in China has been estimated to be 1,115 trillion cubic feet, the largest of any country in the world. As of 2013, China is one of only three countries to produce shale gas in commercial quantities.
Chayanda field is a large hydrocarbon resource field, primarily of natural gas and gas condensates. It is located in the Lensky District of the Sakha Republic in Yakutiya.
Natural gas was the United States' largest source of energy production in 2016, representing 33 percent of all energy produced in the country. Natural gas has been the largest source of electrical generation in the United States since July 2015.
Helium storage and conservation is a process of maintaining supplies of helium and preventing wasteful loss.
Petrolia Oil Field is a North Texas segment of land located in Clay County, Texas and the Great Plains. The hydrocarbon exploration site was geographically within 10 miles (16 km) of the Red River of the South. The oil and gas reservoir was located between Texas State Highway 79 and Texas State Highway 148 converging at Petrolia, Texas.
Cliffside Gas Field is located in the Texas Panhandle bearing 9 miles (14 km) west of Texas Highway 87 and 15 miles (24 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas. The Great Plains Panhandle area is located in Potter County, Texas within the vicinity of the unincorporated community Cliffside, Texas.
Oil and gas reserves denote discovered quantities of crude oil and natural gas that can be profitably produced/recovered from an approved development. Oil and gas reserves tied to approved operational plans filed on the day of reserves reporting are also sensitive to fluctuating global market pricing. The remaining resource estimates are likely sub-commercial and may still be under appraisal with the potential to be technically recoverable once commercially established. Natural gas is frequently associated with oil directly and gas reserves are commonly quoted in barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). Consequently, both oil and gas reserves, as well as resource estimates, follow the same reporting guidelines, and are referred to collectively hereinafter as oil & gas.
↑ McFarland, D. F. (1903). "Composition of Gas from a Well at Dexter, Kan". Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science. 19: 60–62. doi:10.2307/3624173. JSTOR3624173.
↑ Cady, H.P.; McFarland, D. F. (1906). "Helium in Kansas Natural Gas". Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science. 20: 80–81. doi:10.2307/3624645. JSTOR3624645.
↑ Sears, Bo (2012). "A History of the Helium Industry". In Nuttall, William J.; Clarke, Richard H.; Glowacki, Bartek A. (eds.). The Future of Helium as a Natural Resource. London: Routledge. pp.29–31. ISBN978-0-415-57697-0.
↑ Daniel S. Turner, "Natural gas in Black Mesa Basin, northeastern Arizona," in Natural Gases of North America, v.2, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Memoir 9, p.1357-1370.
↑ A.P. Pierce and others, "Uranium and helium in the Panhandle gas field, Texas, and adjacent areas," US Geological Survey, Professional Paper 454-G, 1964.
↑ Smith, E. M.; Goodwin, T. W.; Schillinger, J. (2003). "Challenges to the Worldwide Supply of Helium in the Next Decade". Advances in Cryogenic Engineering. 49. A (710): 119–138. Bibcode:2004AIPC..710..119S. doi:10.1063/1.1774674.
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