Blimps long ago lost their value as a means of cargo transportation, military reconnaissance, or anti-aircraft defence; whilst the helium that fills them – more safely than the combustible hydrogen gas which brought down the Hindenburg in 1937 – is sharply increasing its value in other applications. But the US, which is currently producing most of the world’s helium, is short of fresh supplies and low on stocks. This is because the government-set price is rising too slowly to cover the combination of rising demand, delivery and distribution costs, and spot-price speculation. To fix this in the short term, the US Congress is considering a new bill, the Helium Stewardship Act of 2012, but no vote is likely on that until next year. Much of the recent reporting of a helium shortage, and threat to helium-supplied operation of medical scanning machines, has been stimulated by lobbying for the enactment of this bill by the commercial interests; naturally, they want to see the US government lid on helium prices lifted. The Americans believe not only that they dominate worldwide production, but also that they hold the largest reserves of helium in the global market. In theory, that’s a combination which should keep most of the profit from a commercial helium bubble in American pockets. However, Gazprom and Russian experts believe the US reserve estimates to be quite wrong. Russia, they claim, holds the largest share of helium reserves. The key to meeting rising demand, they also claim, lies in the opening of two of Gazprom’s biggest new gasfields, Chayanda (Sakha region) and Kovykta (Irkutsk), accompanied by investment to build Russian plants to liquefy helium – a form of the gas which currently isn’t produced in Russia, and must be imported.
Building these two gasfields is exactly what chief executive Alexei Miller told President Vladimir Putin on October 29 that Gazprom intends to do as quickly as possible. Either that will take the gas out of the helium bubble, or else it will blow the windfall profits in an unexpected, Russian direction. Last year, according to the US Geological Service (USGS), the US produced 140 million cubic metres (mcm) of helium gas; of that, 83 mcm came from active natural gas wells, and 57 mcm from the federal government’s National Helium Reserve. That’s an underground stockpile known as the Bush Dome Reservoir at Amarillo, Texas. Altogether, this US output amounted to 78% of worldwide production. The USGS calculation is that US reserves of helium are 4 billion cubic metres, trailed by Algeria with 1.8 bcm, and Russia with 1.7 bcm.
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