The National Helium Conservation Program
Authors: Hibbard Walter R. 
Published: December 2007

This paper was prepared for the 42nd Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Houston, Tex., Oct. 1–4, 1967. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made.

Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

I appreciate very much this opportunity to talk with you about the Bureau of Mines helium program, which exemplifies our efforts to obtain maximum beneficial use from our country's natural minerals and fuels resources. This program also exemplifies our efforts to conduct all of our programs in the Bureau of Mines in a business-like manner and to work as closely as possible with private industry in the achievement of our objectives.

I would like to begin my talk in a way that may surprise you - by showing you an abbreviated financial statement for the helium program as of June 30, 1967. If you are interested in more of the details of this statement, we would be pleased to send you a copy of our business-type annual report when it is printed.

The statement shows that the program had a net worth of $91.0 million at the end of June. This was achieved almost entirely by the investment of retained earnings to acquire and store for future beneficial use, helium that otherwise would have been wasted in natural gas consumed as fuel.

I would also like to show you a summary of the expenditures and financing in the program for fiscal year 1967. You will see that more than half of the expenditures were financed out of current income - all of the expenditures for manufacturing, administration, research, and capital improvements, plus a large part of the expenditures for acquiring and storing otherwise wasted helium. The Bureau of Mines borrowed $23.2 million from the Treasury in fiscal year 1967 while acquiring and storing 3.7 billion cubic feet of otherwise wasted helium at a cost of $42.3 million. The money borrowed from the Treasury will be repaid, with accumulated interest, when the stored helium is withdrawn and sold to supply demands in the future.

My next slide is an estimate of the probable future demand for helium to 1985. This estimate, which was made by the Bureau of Mines in 1959, is a logistic curve based upon historical data in the years before 1959. The demand is calculated to reach a maximum annual demand of 2 billion cubic feet in the year 2000. During the first half of fiscal year 1967, the helium demand was very close to the one billion cubic feet a year rate indicated for that year. However, the demand slumped after the unfortunate fire in the Apollo spacecraft; and it was less than expected for the entire year - about 922 million cubic feet.