Guest “Everything you never wanted to know about helium” by David Middleton
Free-For-All In Helium Market Could Send Prices Sky-High
By Tom Kool – Mar 30, 2022The gas that is critical for everything from supercomputing and space travel to MRIs and medical and scientific research was facing a supply shortage even before Russia launched a war on Ukraine.
Now, the supply squeeze is on war-footing, and some investors are on the lookout for a North American supplier that can get this gas to the market–fast.
The gas is helium…
The backbone of much of our existing technology …
And the beating heart of our future technology.
While a helium land rush was already at full throttle after the Federal government shut down its helium reserve in the third quarter of last year, the supply of this gas is facing another big hit with Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Earlier this week, Algeria–a key supplier–was forced to shut down its helium operations because of soaring natural gas demand in Europe.
[…]
America’s Biggest Helium Play?
In our view, Total Helium is parked in the right place at exactly the right time.
The “right place” is the Hugoton natural gas field in the Kansas-Oklahoma panhandle.
Hugoton is the largest natural gas field in the United States, and the largest conventional natural gas play in North America, having already produced 75 trillion cubic feet of methane.
The field has already produced some 300 BCF of helium.
Now that the Federal Helium Reserve in Amarillo, Texas, has been shut down and all its helium auctioned off, Hugoton has become one of the most important helium supply sources in North America.
[…]
OilPrice.com
Most natural gas contains at least a trace of helium. However, commercially recoverable concentrations generally require two (2) geological factors:
- The natural gas reservoir must overlie fractured granitoid basement rocks.
- The caprock must form a particularly impermeable seal.
As early as 2011, it was suggested that helium might eventually become a primary drilling target, rather than just a byproduct of natural gas production.
Total Helium might just be making the right play at the right time. They have built up a large acreage position in and around the Hugoton natural gas field.
Hugoton has produced over 300 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas along with 75 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of helium over the past 100 years. While natural gas prices are at their highest level since 2014.
Helium prices are approaching escape velocity…
Natural gas is trading at about $6.60/mcf this afternoon. In 2018, helium was going for $280/mcf. (mcf = thousand cubic feet). That price is currently skyrocketing, because… government mismanagement.
Helium supply crunch looms as US alters storage strategy
posted by Will Phillips
in Supply chain
23 February 2022A vital helium reserve in the US that supplies the global market will stop selling to the public in September 2022, threatening a supply crunch.
The US government has owned up to 1bn cubic meters of helium gas in a Federal Helium Reserve (FHR) – managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – since 1925. It is now disposing of its remaining helium and assets by transfer to other federal bodies and public sales.
The end of public sales in September, alongside major incidents at a helium factory in Russia – a key supplier – and tensions with Ukraine, mean prices are expected to skyrocket.
Tom Kool, head of operations at price-tracking website Oilprice, said: “A helium supply crunch may be growing more critical with each passing day… The world is quickly coming to grips with one of the biggest supply squeezes of our times.”
Helium gas prices have risen dramatically since 2019, when the US government sold at a rate of $280 per million cubic feet (Mcf). Now that figure has more than doubled, selling for up to $600/Mcf.
The US produces 40% of the world’s helium supply, with the majority coming from the FHR. The FHR has reserved all helium found on federal land since 1925, and purchased crude helium extracted by natural gas producers for storage at its facility in Amarillo, Texas. This purchasing policy accumulated 1bn cubic meters of helium by 1995 and led to the reserve being $1.4bn in debt.
The FHR is currently the only helium storage facility in the world and has sold crude helium to private companies since 1996, often at below-market prices, in order to clear the debt.
The FHR was established to provide gas for airships and in the 1950s supplied the government with coolant for the Cold War and Space Race.
[…]
CIPS.org
For nearly 100 years, the US government controlled the production, storage and sales of helium, essentially driving the program out of business. The FHR accumulated 1 billion cubic meters (~35Bcf) of helium and $1.4 billion in debt. Fortunately, the USGS estimates that there’s a lot of recoverable helium left in the ground…
USGS Estimates 306 Billion Cubic Feet of Recoverable Helium in the United States
Agency releases first-ever assessment of recoverable helium
By Communications and Publishing September 28, 2021
The natural gas reservoirs of the United States contain an estimated 306 billion cubic feet of recoverable helium, according to a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey. This is the first-ever estimate of recoverable helium resources from the USGS.
“This helium assessment is a perfect application of our long-standing research on geologic reservoirs ranging from natural gas resources to carbon dioxide storage potential,” said Sarah Ryker, USGS associate director for energy and mineral resources. “This publicly available assessment will provide an unbiased estimate of the remaining volume of helium that private markets can rely on.”
Helium is a lighter-than-air gas that is primarily used in medical imaging such as MRIs, semiconductor manufacturing, laser welding, aerospace, defense and energy programs. Almost all commercial helium supplies come from the production of natural gas. As the natural gas is pumped to the surface, it brings other gases such as helium along with it. The helium can then be captured and stored separately from the natural gas.
Helium is considered a nonrenewable resource because it is produced with other non-renewable gases and it is also light enough to escape Earth’s gravity into space.
The United States is the leading supplier of helium for the world, producing 2.15 billion cubic feet of helium (61 million cubic meters) in 2020, or about 44% of the total global production. This assessment represents about 150 years of supply at 2020 U.S. production levels. However, because most production of helium is as a byproduct of natural gas production, it is unlikely that all 306 billion cubic feet of helium would be produced.
A significant portion of the Nation’s helium production has historically come through the Federal Helium Program, managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
The USGS tracks helium production, both in the United States and globally, in its annual Mineral Commodity Summaries. These estimates have included both production from private wells and releases from the Federal Helium System.
This assessment of helium resources was undertaken by the USGS under the direction of the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013. It was informed by assessments of geologic carbon dioxide storage potential and studies of other energy-related gases.
The assessment report is entitled “National Assessment of Helium Resources Within Known Natural Gas Reservoirs” and can be accessed here. USGS commodity information on helium can be found here. To find out more about USGS energy assessments and other energy research, please visit the USGS Energy Resources Program website, sign up for our Newsletter, and follow us on Twitter. More information about USGS commodity data for helium and more than 90 other mineral commodities can be found here. All other USGS mineral resource information can be found here.
USGS
306 Bcf would represent about 150 years’ worth of current annual production. Unsurprisingly, the assessment (Brennan et al., 2021) found that 99% of the recoverable helium was in the Rocky Mountains and Mid-Continent regions, where the natural gas reservoirs generally overlie fractured granitoid rocks and are overlain with particularly impermeable sealing formations.
Here’s a schematic cross-section of the Panhandle Field in the Hugoton complex and the Anadarko Basin:
The primary reservoirs are Early Permian dolomitic carbonates, with Middle Permian evaporites (mainly anhydrite) providing the seal. The hydrocarbons are sourced from Devonian, Mississippian and Pennsylvanian shales (Ball et al., 1991). The helium is sourced from the underlying fractured Cambrian-Precambrian igneous basement rocks.
It’s interesting to note that the Palo Duro Basin, just south of the Amarillo Uplift has very little hydrocarbon production. This appears to be due to a lack of sufficiently thermally mature source rocks (Rose, 1986).
The definitive characteristics of this play are its setting in the central portion of the Palo Duro Basin and
USGS, 1995
the Pennsylvanian and Permian ages of its reservoirs. The main weakness of this play is apparent lack of source rock.
The Granite Wash formation, an excellent reservoir, directly overlays the Precambrian igneous basement in the Palo Duro basement. Whereas, in the Anadarko Basin, there is a very thick organic-rich sequence of sedimentary rocks in between the reservoir rocks and the Precambrian igneous basement… Coincidence? (Rhetorical).
Terrestrial helium is a nonrenewable resource because Earth makes it a lot more slowly than we produce it… What happens if we run out of helium on Earth? Ralph Kramden has the answer:
“Bang zoom… to the Moon!”
14 March 2019
Helium-3: Lunar Gold Fever
Astrophysics | Energy | Nuclear energy | Physics | SpaceIn 1986, scientists at the Institute of Fusion Technology at the University of Wisconsin estimated that the lunar “soil”, called the regolith, contains one million tons of helium-3 (3He), a material that could be used as fuel to produce energy by nuclear fusion. According to the study, mining it would be a profitable undertaking: the energy produced by the helium-3 would be 250 times greater than that needed to extract this resource from the Moon and transport it to Earth, where the lunar reserves of helium-3 could supply human needs for centuries.
The analysis of the researchers, based on samples collected by the Apollo missions, triggered a fever for this new lunar gold, which would be worth billions of dollars for those who controlled it. However, more than 30 years later, not a single gram has been collected yet, and there are those who say that it will never happen, because —according them— helium-3 has only served to inflate an enormous balloon of unfounded speculation.
The nuclear fusion of light atoms, such as the hydrogen isotopes deuterium (2H) and tritium (3H), has been seen for decades as the energy source of the future, inexhaustible and much less polluting than the fission of heavy atoms such as uranium. However, the technological development needed for it to be a practical and energy-efficient option still keeps researchers busy, and it is not an entirely clean energy: the fusion of deuterium and tritium produces neutrons, particles that cause radioactive contamination and that cannot be contained with electromagnetic fields, since they lack an electrical charge.
Against this, helium-3 (a non-radioactive isotope of the gas used to inflate balloons) offers remarkable advantages: its fusion with deuterium is more efficient than deuterium-tritium and does not release neutrons but protons, which can be easily contained thanks to their positive charge. In addition, it is possible to capture its energy to produce electricity directly, without the need for a water heating process to move turbines, as in current nuclear fission plants.
[…]
BBVA Open Mind
Let’s go! Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt has already written up the business plan!
References
Ball, M. M.; Henry, Mitchell E.; Frezon, Sherwood E.; Petroleum geology of the Anadarko Basin region, Province (115), Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas; 1991; OFR; 88-450-W.
Brennan, S.T., Rivera, J.L., Varela, B.A., and Park, A.J., 2021, National assessment of helium resources within known natural gas reservoirs: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2021–5085, 5 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20215085.
Rose, P R. Petroleum geology of the Palo Duro Basin, Texas Panhandle. United States: N. p., 1986. Web.
Schmitt H (2006) Return to the Moon: exploration, enterprise, and energy in the human settlement of space. Springer, New York
Sorenson, Raymond. (2003). A dynamic model for the Permian Panhandle and Hugoton fields, Western Anadarko basin. Search and Discovery Article #20015. Adapted for online presentation from poster session presented at the 2003 AAPG Mid-Continent Section Meeting, Tulsa, Oklahoma, October 12-14, 2003.
As always, thank you Mr. Middleton for your contributions to this invaluable website.
I’ll second that. On the topic of helium, if I were really paranoid, I’d be inclined to think that the Feds did away with the helium reserve in order to curtail the launching of weather balloons, given that data from radio sondes always seems to contradict output from the GCMs.
I seem to remember that a few years ago the US Government got rid of a helium reserve. Looks like smart forward thinking!
A lot of high-altitude balloons use hydrogen, because it’s immensely cheaper than helium. Included are radiosondes, whose concept of operations is summarized as “pop and drop”, i.e. the balloon ascends to its maximum altitude, undergoes a pressure burst, and drops its payload on a parachute. It’s a very elegant, “not much can go wrong with” approach, and has been used in scores of millions of radiosondes worldwide. The flammability of hydrogen isn’t really a factor in unmanned balloons (and even in some manned balloons).
I really like writing up these sorts of posts because I always learn something in the process.
While I had heard of Hugoton gas field, I had never really looked at it in detail and didn’t realize it was adjacent to the Palo Duro Basin, where I first bird-dogged a Vibroseis crew back in 1981.
For all his failings (and there were many), Boone Pickens made a lot of people aware of the Hugoton field and its uncommon properties.
The Hugoton field was the first to have a fracking experiment (by BP). It didn’t seem to be a game changer at that time, and subsequent efforts didnt bear much fruit until ‘horizontal’ drilling was invented.
1947… https://www.kgs.ku.edu/Publications/PIC/pic32.html#:~:text=The%20first%20experimental%20hydraulic%20fracturing,1).
NOT BP.
BP did do the first hydraulic fracs and certainly not in the Hugoton Field. It was Stanolind Oil and Gas Company the exploration and production arm of Standard Oil of Indiana. Stanolind later became Amoco. Amoco was merged (actually taken over) by BP in about 1999 much to the detriment of most Amoco employees.
Stanolind (Amoco) did other early hydraulic fracs in the Denver basin and at Ignacio Dome in the San Juan Basin in 1949 and remained a leading hydraulic fracture technology and research company for 5 decades. Amoco was the largest natural gas producer in the USA and had very large, dominant and successful natural gas operations in the Hugoton, San Juan, and in the Denver Basin, all of which required hydraulic fracture stimulations. BP took over in 1999 and disposed of almost all of these assets and dismantled the research centers.
Interestingly, the natural gas reservoirs in the Hugoton field are very shallow (2000-3000 feet) and are “under pressured”, which means the fluid pressure is less than that exerted by a column of water equal to the depth of the gas zones. Guess what happens when you drill into these gas zones with the drill hole full of water.
At those prices, drilling for helium alone might be profitable.
True. Might even eclipse the current source of most Amarillo business activity.
https://www.bigtexan.com/72-oz-steak/
That’s on my Bucket List… 🙂
Mine too
Sadly… Even though I’ve lived in Texas for 41 years, I’ve never eaten at the Big Texan or visited Palo Duro Canyon. “Amarillo by morning”… eventually!
We should organize a WUWT “re”union (*) at the Big Texan. What an ideal venue for discussion of energy/climate/politics over a Texas-size meal.
I’d buy one round of drinks!
(*) the “re” for never actually have had a “first” union.
Total Helium seems to think so. Economically recoverable helium wells range from 0.3 to 7% He. Natural gas is currently around $6.60/mcf (Henry Hub). At $600/mcf 0.3% He is worth $1.80 per mcf of natural gas. At 7%, it’s worth $42 per mcf of natural gas.
It will be a good business, if they can’t produce enough volume.
Elon is THE MAN and he digs it-
Elon Musk: Tesla Might Actually Have To Get Into Mining (msn.com)
More bad news I’m afraid climate changers. We’re gunna have to stick with the plant food since it’s pretty obvious we can’t keep up with lithium battery storage for the treclic Utopia-
Hydrogen 11 times worse than CO2 for climate, says new report (newatlas.com)
Iit reacts with oxygen to produce a potent greenhouse gas 🙂
Everywhere they turn the news just keeps getting worse for the plant food hysterics-
The Biden administration gives a green light to a fuel that could be even dirtier than regular gas (msn.com)
Obviously all this bad stuff has been computer modelled and you know how it is with the computer models climate changers?
A few good gulps of Helium can make you sound just like AOC – and Minnie Mouse.
Even though you can sound like AOC, you’ll NEVER, EVER even come
close to being as stupid as she is. She’s one of a kind. And that’s a
really, really, really good thing! 😮 😉
I dont think so. Therw thousands more stupid than she is just in her congressional district and not counting those in other districts that could not vote for her.
We need a ‘worse than we thought’ scale. We could call it the ‘griff‘ scale.
I would imagine that successful nuclear fusion would register 11 griffs and a total meltdown.
Thanks, fretslider. “‘griff’ scale” made me laugh.
Regards,
Bob
You may need to turbocharge your scale as Griffo can crank
it up to 11 while asleep. Griffo’s the “master of faux disaster”!
😮 😉
David, I’m a geologist but I always get a big boost in geological knowledge from your wonderful posts. I knew that natural gas was the commercial source of helium, but that was that.
What about petroleum in that geo setting. I guess it would be in the gas and liquids separated from petroleum, but with the bulk of the fluid being oil, it should have the potential to receive ~ the same amount of H, richly concentrated in the gaseous fraction, maybe.
Also, I wonder if there any possible traps of mainly H, say under overthrust sheets with evaporates in places without oil and gas? And what about associated with uranium deposits (collect above the shaft) from mine working and from ventilation exhaust?
Gary, I get a big boost in geological knowledge too from these posts. I had run across the Geology.com helium article several years ago, but otherwise didn’t know very much about the subject prior to writing this post.
He is always going to migrate to the top of the trap. So, there probably isn’t any in the Hugoton oil rim. I suppose that He could be present in brine-filled aquifers above granitic basement and below evaporites.
I doubt He would be present in ventilation shafts, due to the lack of an impermeable seal.
He3 and He4 can eventually be produced by fusion. Fuse a proton with a Deuterium and you get He3. Fuse the He3 with another Deuterium and you get He4 and the proton needed to create the He3. Proof of concept comes from the Sun.
Yeah any business plan that depends on fusion power plants’ demand for 3He is permanently 40 years ahead of its time, I reckon.
But you’re right, all they need to do is assemble enough hydrogen to build another sun, and the concept will be proven. How hard can that be?
My preference is a directed beam fusion approach; high energy protons and he3 collisions with low energy and readily focused D2. The biggest technical issue is separating the He3, He4 and proton fusion products from the colliding beams.
The Sun also creates the D2 by proton-proton fusion., but that’s a step we can bypass since we have plenty of D2 available in the oceans,
We’d have to bypass proton-proton fusion, since it could never be done on a human scale – ever, regardless of technical advances. The proton-proton fusion cross section peaks at 1E-25 barns at 1 MeV temperature, and yields only 1.4 MeV. That it can happen in stars at all is due to their stupendous density, and astronomical size.
Yes, we have plenty of deuterium in the oceans. But helium 3/deuterium fusion is certainly not more efficient than D-D or D-T fusion. Its fusion cross section is 0.5 barns at a temperature of 300 keV, contrasted with D-T fusion with a cross section of 5 barns at 80 keV. Helium3/deuterium yields 18.3 MeV, while D-T yields 17.8 MeV, a slight difference considering the enormously high temperature for helium3/deuterium fusion. The latter may not even be possible, given the enormous loss of energy due to bremsstrahlung radiation at such high temperatures.
Lack of neutrons in a fusion reaction is a bug, rather than a feature, IMHO. We need scads of neutrons to breed more tritium, to transmute abundant but otherwise worthless actinides into useful fissile fuels (see 232Th), and to help get rid of nuclear waste.
It should be easier to turn He3-D fusion into useful electricity. The product is for all intents a current of positive H4 ions. Modulate the fusion and now we have an AC current of H4 ions from which useful power can be efficiently extracted with what amounts to a transformer.
The bremsstrahlung radiation can be minimized by keeping the D cold and only the He3 ‘hot’, but not hot in a Brownian motion sense, but as an energetic collated beam colliding with what for all intents and purposes is a relatively motionless, but dense, beam of D. The cold nature of this beam makes it easily focused and deflected into the high energy He3 beam using the same techniques used in a CRT resulting in fusion much like how it would happen with a Z-pinch.
He is the ultimate in non-recyclable elements. If you let it escape, it just takes off and rises up to the top of the atmosphere. There it is blown away by the solar wind and is gone forever. Let the stuff get away from you once and it is gone for good. There is no recovering it.
As a spoilsport it ought not to be used for party balloons.
I agree with you, but I think the pricing situation is going to take care of this little wasteful activity.
not to worry, we can always fill happy birthday balloons with hydrogen. now that would be a party.
Hydrogen in small quantities (like a balloon) goes “poof” if you put a match to it,but that’s all. I know that in school chemistry lab we made H2 in jars and tried this. I doubt party balloons are really much of a danger. I think there may be a bigger problem in that H2 is a smaller molecule and escapes the balloon more easily.
Tie them off with fuse cord, light, and release 🙂
Thanks, linking this to several people!
You finance the moon operations and I’ll get backers for local air extraction with other component fractionate separation. Just don’t ask for taxpayer subsidies for your venture. P.S. there are some other interesting granites to explore if the price incentives existed.
Further info…
Helium Data Sheet – Mineral Commodity Summaries 2020 (usgs.gov)
Helium Statistics and Information | U.S. Geological Survey (usgs.gov)
Helium reserves, natural gas, US helium reserves | Homeland Security Newswire
Defense Department Takes Immediate Action to Shore Up Critical Materials Supply Chain
H.R.2154 – 96th Congress (1979-1980): Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Piling Revision Act of 1979 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress
Download Strategic And Critical Materials Report To The Congress Operations Under The Strategic And Critical Materials Stock Piling Act During The Period October 1997 Through September 1998 Book PDF EPUB TUEBL MOBI (euro-book.net)
Neat discussion. Did not know anything except the questionable decision to close the national helium reserve.
A lot of studies went into that decision from commodity experts.
They were losing money… a feature with government run businesses.
One of the top three posts ever here.
One question, why did feds get rid of reserve?
https://www.blm.gov/press-release/blm-announces-disposal-process-federal-helium-system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve#:~:text=The%20reserve%20was%20established%20with,Cold%20War%20and%20Space%20Race.
Thank you.
Funny how something that was to operate via a revolving fund with no tax payer money could be over a billion dollars in debt.
C’mon then, bring on the Devil’s Avocado….
Quote:Helium is a lighter-than-air gas that is primarily used in medical imaging such as MRIs, semiconductor manufacturing, laser welding, aerospace, defense and energy programs.
sorry people, can we have a little less of the unquestioning wide-eyed gobsmacked awe ## and a touch more realism?
## = to all intents what defines a warmist
Thanks for this great insight, David.
The company I work for will be impacted by rising helium price as it is the biggest maker of high field MRI and NMR scanners for research (but not clinical).
What else could helium prices do, except rise?
It makes you wonder where the uranium roll front deposits are.
Hillary sold them to the Russians. /s
No one else has been able to screw things up to this level and have the media for the most part silent. Have not heard anything from the Congress on the Democrat side and cannot expect any push back from the ever silent Republicans. Thanks for this excellent article.
Could some helium have been trapped somehow when the earth was formed rather than it all coming from the decay of uranium?
I don’t think so. The rocky planets were formed from the Sun’s ‘solid’ accretion disk. Any helium would have had plenty of time to escape from those particles. OTOH, Jupiter (a giant gas planet) is about 90% hydrogen and 10% helium. Maybe it also has a small solid core—nobody knows.
“Maybe it also has a small solid core—nobody knows.”
I do, and for $19.95, I’ll tell you…
Jupiter (a giant gas planet) is about 90% hydrogen and 10% helium.
Now there’s a good space mining project potential scam
I find it strange that helium 3 should be present in large quantities in the regolith (soil) of the moon. As David says to find helium in a gas well on earth the cap over the reservoir must be of an impervious material. Why helium would remain in the soil of the moon with its lessor gravity is difficult to comprehend.
On a personal matter I have had hundreds of thousands cubic feet of helium pass through my lungs while working as a saturation diver for offshore oil. For a number of years this was expired to waste until feasible reclaim systems were developed
Other way round – the He3 isn’t produced on the Moon and stayed there over time, it’s from the sun and has been driven into the lunar regolith by the solar wind. An easy way of testing this would be to compare samples from the light and dark sides to see if they contain different amounts of He3.
You know there is no dark side of the moon, right?
It has a 28 day +/- long day. As it goes around the Earth the back side get illuminated more and more as the new moon approaches. It is locked with the same face always toward the Earth, but the whole thing sees the sun over a 28 day period.
D’oh. My bad – thought it had one side locked towards the sun. Should have remembered the basics – on the bright side (heh) more He3!
It supposedly comes from the solar wind. It seems odd to think of helium not floating up. But if you think about it, helium is lighter than air, but much heavier than vacuum. So if you have a lot of it bombarding the lunar surface, there is no buoyancy to float it up off the surface after it penetrates the surface.
What are the underlying fault patterns in the basement rock in the Palo Duro Basin?
Lots of faults, great reservoir rocks, ideal structural timing for migration and a paucity of thermally mature source rocks.
https://www.beg.utexas.edu/publications/tectonic-structures-palo-duro-basin-texas-panhandle#:~:text=The%20Palo%20Duro%20Basin%20is,the%20sparsity%20of%20structural%20information.
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6010791-petroleum-geology-palo-duro-basin-texas-panhandle
I appreciate that. I also looked to see what I could find.
A 1982 report on feasibility of the basin being a nuclear waste repository had a graphic of the geology. What I saw was distinguished from the other basin’s image, you provided, not near the amount of faulting, nor the uplift or subsidence.
Perhaps that is why the authors of the report looked at it as a potential nuclear wast repository, the geologic structure was stable, thus potentially safer as a repository.
(Although, no repository was built.)
Hydrocarbons of heavier weight & length fall out earlier in the ‘hydrocarbon column’, thus, heavy hydrocarbons are most always found under oil and then natural gas, and in rare occasions, with the right cap rocks and fractured granite, helium is at the top.
Rock laced with heavy hydrocarbons below lighter hydrocarbons in a vertical column is consistent with abiotic oil theory.
The uplifts are the Amarillo Uplift to the north and the Matador Arch to the south. The subsidence is the Palo Duro Basin, which subsided and filled by sedimentary deposition.
The Anadarko Basin is north of the Amarillo Uplift. Basement faulting is primarily along the interface with the uplift.
The Palo Duro Basin is south of the Amarillo Uplift. Basement faulting is primarily along the interface with the uplift.
The only major difference between the Palo Duro Basin and the surrounding basins is its paucity of thermally mature source rocks.
Rose, P.R. (1986). Petroleum geology of the Palo Duro Basin, Texas Panhandle (BMI/ONWI–589). United States
The presence of reservoir rocks, structural traps, competent seals and lack of thermally mature source rocks are among the the reasons that the Palo Duro Basin is currently being evaluated for its CCS potential.
Merrill, M.D., Slucher, E.R., Roberts-Ashby, T.L., Warwick, P.D., Blondes, M.S., Freeman, P.A., Cahan, S.M., DeVera, C.A., and Lohr, C.D., 2015, Geologic framework for the national assessment of carbon dioxide storage
resources─Permian and Palo Duro Basins and Bend Arch-Fort Worth Basin, chap. K of Warwick, P.D., and Corum, M.D., eds., Geologic framework for the national assessment of carbon dioxide storage resources: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2012–1024–K, 42 p., http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20121024K.
While it lacks much in the way of oil and gas production, the Palo Duro Basin does have helium…
Zaikowski, Anthony Bonnie J. Kosanke, Norman Hubbard, Noble gas composition of deep brines from the Palo Duro Basin, Texas, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Volume 51, Issue 1, 1987, Pages 73-84, ISSN 0016-7037, https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-7037(87)90008-1.
Some of the helium in Panhandle-Hugoton Field might actually be sourced from the Palo Duro Basin.
Brown, Alton ; Origin of helium and nitrogen in the Panhandle–Hugoton field of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, United States. AAPG Bulletin 2019;; 103 (2): 369–403. doi: https://doi.org/10.1306/07111817343
This is abject nonsense:
I appreciate the discussion in the material you provided, thank you.
Question: why would Palo Duro Basin be absent the ancient algae that the basins to the north & south apparently had (according to “fossil” theory)?
“The Palo Duro Basin, Permian Basin, Texas is an asymmetric, relatively shallow, intracratonic basin”
The key is that the basin in intracratonic. As you point out the small amount of hydrocarbons in the basin are concentrated above the areas with the most uplift & subsidence.
“Rock laced with heavy hydrocarbons below lighter hydrocarbons in a vertical column is consistent with abiotic oil theory.”
Mr. Middleton, you disagree with abiotic oil theory, ok, but the fact is that the description I provided is consistent with abiotic oil theory.
Are you familiar with abiotic oil theory?
And fact is that the quoted description is often exactly how oil & natural gas are found in situ … above an area of heavy hydrocarbons.
What you call “source” rocks are in reality residue rocks, the residue being the heavy hydrocarbons which because of their physical properties do not migrate as high in the geologic column as lighter & smaller hydrocarbons.
You never came to grips with why the basin was thought to have potential for a nuclear waste repository.
(The graphic I saw in the 1982 report suggested a consistent “layer cake” geology with little subsidence or uplift.)
I’ll suggest the reason was because it was “intracratonic”, the same reason there isn’t a lot of hydrocarbons as opposed to its sister basins to the north & south.
It’s not “absent the ancient algae.” The kerogen in the source rocks is mostly thermally immature.
All of these basins have essentially layer cake geology. The Hardeman Basin is particularly layer cake.
All of them are intracratonic basins. Basins. by definition subsided. The uplifts that bound these basins, by definition, uplifted.
[…]
[…]
https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2012/1111/pdf/ofr2012-1111.pdf
Palo Duro Basin: Paucity of thermally mature source rocks, very little oil & gas production.
Anadarko Basin and Hollis-Hardeman Basin: Abundance of thermally mature source rocks, prolific oil & gas production.
The prolific East Texas Salt Basin was also evaluated as a potential nuclear waste repository. Any sedimentary basin with significant evaporite sequences is a potential repository.
David,
Very good article. Thanks for your work. Just one thing. Your second figure,”Helium-bearing natural gas deposits” does not show the LaBarge Field in western Wyoming. It is located next to Riley Ridge field and is much larger. La Barge produces 40% of the USA helium from the Madison Limestone. Exxon is the operator. This is a huge anticline, structural trap. First production was 1986.
Though there isn’t much oil in Arizona, it is a source of helium and possibly holds a good deal more than this article suggest. With the shortages, it might soon be another Arizona gold rush to recover it.
http://azgeology.azgs.arizona.edu/archived_issues/azgs.az.gov/arizona_geology/archived_issues/Winter_2003.pdf
Good article, David.
I have wondered if another overlooked source of helium might be the fracking of “hot shales”, shales with high gamma-ray signatures from embedded uranium.
If that was the case, the Marcellus should be a big helium play. Although, Marcellus is a source of radon gas. Could be that the top seal isn’t adequate to trap helium.
Hi David,
I wonder if you’ve thought of doing a similar post on another important gas…neon…I understand that most of the world’s neon comes(came) from the Ukraine. Do the US or any other countries have any useful reserves?
I hadn’t thought of it… Sounds like an interesting project.
I had never thought about Neon, so I Binged that and from a few different sources copy/pasted below…very interesting.
Neon is the fifth most abundant element in the universe. However, it is present in the Earth’s atmosphere at a concentration of just 18 parts per million. It is extracted by fractional distillation of liquid air.
Its only commercial source is the atmosphere, in which it is 18 parts per million by volume. Because its boiling point is −246 °C (−411 °F), neon remains, along with helium and hydrogen, in the small fraction of air that resists liquefaction upon cooling to −195.8 °C (−320.4 °F, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen).
About 70% of global neon supply is produced in Ukraine as a by-product of steel production in Russia. As of 2020, the company Iceblick, with plants in Odessa and Moscow, supplies 65 per cent of the world’s production of neon, as well as 15% of the krypton and xenon.
Many thanks for being much less lazy than I! As you say, a very interesting story.
Not quite sure just why it would be a by-product of steel production and why only in the USSR/Ukraine…do they use a different process to that in the US or China (one requiring the use of liquid air maybe)? Or is there a totally unrelated reason.
I had always assumed it came as a by-product of hydrocarbon accumulations but obviously I was wrong (again!). Sigh…
The plot thickens…although I can’t seem to find out why only Russian steel production and Ukraine’s ability to purify it seem to be the main game in town. There has been no Neon shipments from Ukraine since the invasion started Feb 24th. Not good.
“Ukraine makes more than 90% of the high-grade neon in gas-phase lasers used to make chips produced by U.S. (and Taiwanese) semiconductor companies. The gas is a biproduct of Russian steel manufacturing which is purified in Ukraine, said market research company Techcet. Neon prices soared during the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2014.”
https://www.fierceelectronics.com/electronics/ukraine-war-could-hurt-supplies-neon-palladium-needed-chips
Yes…it’s all a bit of a mystery (to me at least). Maybe there will be some steel manufacturing experts here who might be able to enlighten us.
Now I know more about Helium than I did yesterday. You need to put all these great posts together into a coffee table book, David, (full of pictures and graphs) so we could give them as gifts to friends and family who are all anti carbon. We all seem to take for granted what these fantastic resources have done for the advancement of the human project.
I once had an inquisitive kid ask me why if hydrogen and helium are the most abundant elements in the universe, why isn’t there more of those raw resources here on the good Earth. Good question, I said.
This article along with the comments and discussion is a brilliant example of the mature and informative nature of this website.
Many thanks to all who contributed.
I really wasn’t going for “mature”… Not my style… LOL! 😉
Apart from source rocks one assumes…
I guess Sheldon and Leonard could really not afford Helium today.