Facility Stays Busy Despite Law to End Government’s Helium Work
By Kevin Welch, Amarillo Globe-News, Texas
Oct. 23–The new head of the agency overseeing helium production north of Amarillo got his first look at work there Monday.
“I didn’t even know this existed three or four months ago,” said Jim Caswell, director of the Bureau of Land Management. “I was on the New Mexico office’s Web site and saw there was a field office in Amarillo, Texas, and wondered what that was for.”
The federal government started the helium production and storage facility in 1929.
The Army valued it as a safe, noncombustible alternative to hydrogen for use in aircraft like blimps.
The Amarillo plant strips helium from natural gas produced from 23 wells before enhancing it to about 80 percent purity. The gas then goes to private businesses along a 425-mile pipeline that refine it further.
“The field won’t be void when the law expires. We’ll have to do some work with Congress to see where we go from here.”
“It produces 45 percent of U.S. needs and over one third of the world’s needs,” said Hans Stuart, chief of external affairs for BLM’s Santa Fe office. “It produces two billion cubic feet a year.”
Despite a federal law passed in 1996 to end the government’s helium work by 2015, the Amarillo facility is staying busy.
“The big thing that’s changed is demand,” Stuart said. “This was never intended to supply so much.”
Worldwide production can’t keep up with that demand, resulting in tight markets.
“We get calls every week from newspapers and places like Fox News,” Stuart said. “And what starts it is shortages of party balloons.”
Helium is used for more than filling those balloons.
Manufacturers use it when making semiconductors, it cools magnets in MRI machines, among other uses. Other uses range from welding to pressurizing space shuttle fuel tanks.
Given the law that says sell off all the helium by 2015, the future of the facility is unclear.
“There’s no place else in the world this happens, particularly for the government to be so involved,” Caswell said. “The field won’t be void when the law expires. We’ll have to do some work with Congress to see where we go from here.”
The plant pays the federal treasury for the cost of building the facility and operating it with income from selling the helium.
“We paid $150 million last year. Next year, it will be more as the price goes up,” said Nabil Dia, lead general engineer for the Amarillo field office. “There is $430,000 daily from sales.”
Dia led Caswell and others on a tour of the production headquarters, escorted by an employee carrying an “Explosimeter,” a gas sensor used to avoid causing fires or explosions from the variety of gases stored there.
The tour included everything from liquid nitrogen storage to helium well controls buried in a cement pit under a locked steel lid.
The new director also got a chance to look at the facility’s laboratory. Sam Burton, who heads the lab, explained that its function is to test helium from around the world, but especially the plant, for purity.
“Most natural gas has small amounts of helium,” Burton said. “We analyze to find out if there are economical amounts.”
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