Title 43—Public Lands: Interior--Volume 1
PART 16—CONSERVATION OF HELIUM
§ 16.1   Agreements to dispose of helium in natural gas.
(a) Pursuant to his authority and jurisdiction over Federal lands, the Secretary may enter into agreements with qualified applicants to dispose of the helium of the United States upon such terms and conditions as he deems fair, reasonable, and necessary to conserve such helium, whenever helium can be conserved that would otherwise be wasted or lost to Federal ownership or use in the production of oil or gas from Government lands embraced in an oil and gas lease or whenever federally owned deposits of helium-bearing gas are being drained. The precise nature of any agreement will depend on the conditions and circumstances involved in that particular case.
(b) An agreement shall be subject to the existing rights of the Federal oil and gas lessee.
(c) An agreement shall provide that in the extraction of helium from gas produced from Federal lands, it shall be extracted so as to cause no delay, except that required by the extraction process, in the delivery of the residue of the gas produced from such lands to the owner thereof. Title will be granted to the helium which is physically reduced to possession.
§ 16.2   Applications for helium disposition agreements.
The application for a helium disposition agreement need not be in any particular form, but must contain information sufficient to enable the Secretary to determine that the proposal will conserve helium that will otherwise be wasted, drained, or lost to Federal ownership or use, and to evaluate the suitability of the proposal.
§ 16.3   Terms and conditions.
The applicant must agree not to develop wells on Federal land with the principal purpose of recovering the helium component of natural gas unless permission to do so has been expressly granted by the Secretary.
§ 16.4   Consideration to the United States; renegotiation.
(a) The Secretary shall determine the royalty or other compensation to be paid by the applicant, which royalty or other compensation together with the royalties and other compensation paid by the oil and gas lessee, shall be in an amount sufficient to secure to the United States a return on all the values, including recovered helium.
(b) The Secretary may require that each agreement shall contain a renegotiation clause providing for renegotiation of the royalty percentage ten years from the effective date of the agreement and at five-year intervals thereafter.
§ 16.5   Bonds.
The applicant shall be required to submit a bond in such amount and in such form as the Secretary may prescribe to secure the faithful performance of the terms of any agreement made.