This shortage has been worsened by foreign supply woes. helium supply has recently tightened due to ongoing failures at the country’s primary production facility in Amarillo, Texas. At the point of sale, the federal government is totally out of the helium game.Compressed Gas Association Asks Congress to Take Immediate Steps to Safely Resolve Helium Supply Issues in Support of Critical Domestic Manufacturing “Whoever the reserve is sold to, at that point, the federal government is solely negotiating with private companies on purchasing helium, whether it’s available or not. “For me, the real concern I have with the federal government selling the reserve is that the federal government will no longer have control at all over this irreplaceable, nonrenewable, critical natural resource,” he said. While Elsesser said, in a perfect world scenario, he’d like to see the reserve remain in federal hands, he realizes it may be more realistic to focus on setting specific terms related to any eventual sale. “It was an act of Congress that said this thing was going to be sold, so I believe it will take an act of Congress to say this won’t be sold.” He has been communicating with government agencies for years about the merits of helium and as recently as last month met with government officials to discuss the reserve. “I think there’s a lot of questions about who’s got what authority to do what,” said Mark Elsesser, director of government affairs for the American Physical Society, the largest physics membership group in the nation. The dolomite structure, a massive cave-like formation situated beneath two layers of salt that act as a cap, enables the reserve to do what virtually no other known place in the world can do: store helium long term. The value of the reserve, Hayes said, also extends to the unique and natural formation in which the helium is stored. supply is considered the most reliable.Įstablished in the 1920s for what was then a burgeoning blimp industry, the Federal Helium Reserve quickly became the go-to for scores of scientists and private companies when it came to sourcing reliable helium. But due to geopolitical situations elsewhere in the world, the U.S. There are only a handful of significant sources of helium in the world - the U.S., Qatar, Algeria and Russia, chief among them. Scientists estimate that, at the current rate of global consumption, there is a supply of helium for 100-200 more years. earlier in the week, was a helium balloon. military on Saturday after passing over the northern U.S. It’s widely believed that the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, shot down by the U.S. Geological Survey seeking public comments regarding “whether there is an increasing risk of helium-supply disruption.” 30, a notice was posted to the Federal Register by the U.S. Last week, a government-issued helium bulletin inflated their hopes that the United States may be thinking harder about helium. They say that the decision Congress made in 1996 to set into motion a 25-year plan to unload the reserve, in a bid to shrink government, was shortsighted and potentially detrimental to a host of industries, ranging from medical technology to rocket science. “But for the past year, it’s been silent.”įor the better part of a decade, scientists like Hayes have urged government officials to hold on to the reserve, instead of selling it to a private entity - likely a major industrial gas or pipeline company, and possibly one that is foreign-owned. Louis and one of the nation’s leading helium experts. “It was supposed to be sold off by 2021,” said Sophia Hayes, a professor of chemistry at Washington University in St.
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