Helium is not a renewable resource, at least not on any human timescale.
It's not a fossil fuel, but it is made very slowly by radioactive decay
deep down in the ground.
So in terms of managing it, we should be treating it like a fossil fuel.
Once it's pulled up from the ground, used, and dispersed into the atmosphere,
it is ludicrously expensive to recover.
And over time, that dispersed helium is light enough and unreactive enough that
eventually, very, very slowly, it escapes off into space,
which is a problem because helium is enormously useful.
We use it in all sorts of science and medicine,
to keep the magnets in MRI machines cool, in manufacturing processes,
and, yes, to inflate blimps and party balloons.
And over the last decade or so,
there have been a lot of breathless news articles
proclaiming that the world is running out of helium.
A lot of the world's helium comes from under the Great Plains of the USA.
And here in Amarillo, Texas, the US government
has the National Helium Reserve.
At least, they do for now.
- We're standing on top of the Bush Dome,
the reservoir that acts as the storage reservoir,
which is approximately 3,500 feet underground.
As a sponge absorbs water and holds that water in the sponge,
similarly, the small pores in the rock are spaces where the helium can reside.
It's solid rock to the eye, but it is porous
and allows the gas to be stored very efficiently underground.
This reservoir was a natural gas reservoir.
It was depleted, then recharged in the sixties
with 32 billion cubic feet of helium into the ground.
So it's actually helium that we've injected previously
that we're extracting now.
The whole program was to conserve the helium for about 100 years
of the consumption rate then.
Of course, helium has become such a popular element, it has so many uses,
that now, that rate is quite a bit more than originally estimated.
That helium has been withdrawn over approximately 15 years.
And we are now reaching the end of our program
as the field is declining in pressure.
Helium is notoriously known for being able to escape through any small opening.
It's used as a leak detection substance.
You can detect helium very easily.
And if it's able to get out, you have a hole somewhere in that device or product.
By putting it back in the ground, it's not leaking out
of a stainless steel container or a big truck,
it's easily monitored and controlled.
- The plant here is in its annual week of maintenance right now,
which is one of the reasons I'm allowed to get quite this close.
There are still parts I'm not allowed to show you, though.
- The equipment behind me is actually an enrichment unit.
All that gas that was stored in the ground has mixed and blended
with natural gas from the field, and it's no longer in an enriched state.
So by bringing it through the equipment, we take that gas back up to
approximately 80% purity of helium, about 20% impurity of nitrogen.
That's what we produce and send up our 425-mile pipeline
to the private helium plants that then take it to 100%.
There are places in the world that are running out of helium, that's correct.
But there's still approximately 80 to 100 years' worth
of known helium reserves in the United States, in Wyoming.
So to say that we're running out of helium is actually a little bit incorrect.
There's still a lot of helium available and new helium sources being found.
With the recent increases in the helium price,
that's actually stimulated industry to go look for more helium resources.
And they have found more.
So we expect that in the next few years,
more of this helium will be brought to market.
And the shortage will be alleviated, at least for a short period of time.
- Running out of something on our current planetary scale
doesn't mean there suddenly won't be any at all.
It just means that the price of what's left will rise higher and higher and higher
until the lower supply meets lower demand,
which might make some more difficult to reach reservoirs of helium
under the ground worth exploring.
That's capitalism.
Because of all that uncertainty, the price of helium
has been fluctuating a lot over the last few years.
And researchers are often having trouble finding enough money
to keep their experiments going.
And yes, it's why filling party balloons is getting really expensive.
- We are now in the final two years of our program
and facing the last part of our privatization effort.
By the year 2021, we will be stepping out of the helium activity
and transferring it to private entities.
Surprisingly enough, the question comes up about whether or not
we should be using party balloons.
I happen to be a real fan of party balloons.
So for my preference, I still am glad that we have party balloons.
With the price of helium where it is,
there's so much conservation going on now
that the party balloons are actually a very small part of the market.
We've seen now in recent years with the newer helium sources
coming online and this great effort towards helium conservation
that that's really had an impact in making more helium available for everyone.
So I think the party balloons kind of got a bad rap.
- I did think about ending this video by delivering my conclusion in a silly voice
by breathing from a helium balloon, but honestly, we do need to conserve helium
and I figured that would set a bad example.
So this...
...it's just regular air.
I'm glad that flew away! That would've looked terrible if it hadn't worked.