Helium production in the United States

[1] In 2012, helium was recovered at 16 extraction plants, from gas wells in Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming.

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.

[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 18 million cubic feet (510,000 m3) of helium was approved, but Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes blocked export of the gas due to its potential for military use.

L. 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 (684 km) pipeline from Bushton, Kansas, to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field, near Amarillo, Texas.

[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.

Unusual geological conditions are considered necessary for commercial concentrations of helium in natural gas.

Faults, fractures, and igneous intrusives are regarded by some geologists as important pathways for helium to migrate upward into the sedimentary section.

Nonporous caprock such as halite (rock salt) or anhydrite is more effective in trapping helium.

[17] In the early 20th century, the highest production and largest known reserves of helium were in the gases produced for their hydrocarbon content.

[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.

[24] As of 1 October 2023[update], the storage was listed as:[25] The United States is a major exporter of helium.