Changing a few words in a U.S. law governing mineral resources could help ensure more domestic helium for cutting-edge science.
Late last month, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy & Mineral Resources held a hearing on the proposed Helium Extraction Act of 2017. It would update the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920 and allow drillers to push wells into underground caverns on federal lands solely to extract the element.
Under the existing law, well operators can lose their leases if they aren’t producing oil or natural gas along with the helium.
That arrangement was fine when helium prices for scientific users were in the low-single-digit dollars per liter and producers recovered the element only as a by-product of extracting natural gas. A result of uranium and thorium disintegration, helium is found in some gas wells at concentrations ranging from 0.2 to 7% by volume.
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