DOI: 10.5066/p92ql79j
title: Dataset of Helium Concentrations in United States Wells

description: This dataset provides national scale location information for known, publicly available, data on helium gas concentrations, reported in mol%. The dataset was created as part of the effort by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to conduct an assessment of helium resources in accordance with the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013, Public Law 113-40. The data were collected from the USGS Energy Geochemistry Database, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) databases, State geological survey databases, and a thorough review of the published literature. This dataset represents an aggregation of multiple datasets into one unified, cohesive system that has a number of attributes for use in a resource assessment and for dissemination to the public. In 2013, the Helium Stewardship Act (Public Law 113?40; U.S. Congress, 2013) directed the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to create an accounting of the geological helium resources of the United States. The initial task in this endeavor has been to collect all known analyses of subsurface helium gas within the contiguous United States and Alaska. The two main sources of data employed in this assessment process are from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). BLM data come from thousands of gas samples analyzed for the Federal Helium Program, which originally began in 1925 under the U.S. Bureau of Mines (USBM). These analyses were reported in several publications (Moore and Sigler, 1987; Hamak and Gage, 1992; Hamak and Sigler, 1991, 1993; Sigler, 1994; Hamak and Driskill, 1996; Gage and Driskill, 1998, 2003, 2005; Driskill, 2008), and additional unpublished data reside in an internal BLM dataset. A dataset that contains much of the data from USBM, BLM, and USGS analyses is publicly available (U.S. Geological Survey, 2015). The dataset includes all gas analyses from the BLM and USGS datasets with measured values of helium concentrations. Helium values of less than 0.005 mole percent (mol%) are listed as ?TRACE?, and those greater than 0.005 mol% and less than 0.01 mol% were rounded up to 0.01 mol%. We report all helium recognized in gas compositions, even though there is a limit on economically recoverable helium. A minimum helium concentration of 0.3 mol% is needed for the commercial separation of helium from marketable natural gas (National Research Council, 2010). However, helium concentrations as low as 0.04 mol% can be economic if gas is chilled and purified to meet specifications as liquefied natural gas (National Research Council, 2010). It is important to note that there might be several gas samples from different wells in a given reservoir or formation, hence the concentration values reported for each well sample do not necessarily represent the concentration of helium in the entire reservoir. The analytical data in the dataset are supported with identifying information. Each well has an American Petroleum Institute (API) number which is a unique 10-digit identifier. The first two values of the API number indicate the State, the next three indicate the county, and the last five numbers are a unique code for a specific well. Each entry also contains the latitude and longitude of the well, and the names of the gas-producing formation and field. The sample depth in feet and the date that the sample was collected are listed for each well. The reported date is in mm/dd/yyyy format. Wherever ?00? is present in the sample date, this indicates that the sampling day and/or month were not listed in the source publications. Where data are absent in the dataset, or listed as ?not given?, ?UNK? was entered into the field to indicate that information is unknown. References Cited Driskill, D.L., 2008, Analyses of natural gases, 2005?2007: Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 427, 199 p., accessed May 14, 2021 Gage, B.D., and Driskill, D.L., 1998, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1996?1997: Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 404, 71 p., accessed May 14, 2021 Gage, B.D., and Driskill, D.L., 2003, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1998?2001: Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 412, 173 p., accessed May 14, 2021 Gage, B.D., and Driskill, D.L. , 2005, Analyses of Natural Gases, 2002?2004: Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 418, 243 p., accessed May 14, 2021 Hamak, J.E., and Driskill, D.L., 1996, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1994?1995: U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Technical Note 399, 70 p., accessed May 14, 2021 Hamak, J.E., and Gage, B.D., 1992, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1991: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9318, 97 p. Hamak, J.E., and Sigler, S.M., 1991, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1986?1990: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9301, 315 p., accessed May 14, 2021 Hamak, J.E., and Sigler, S.M., 1993, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1992: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9356, 62 p., accessed May 14, 2021 Moore, B.J., and Sigler, S.M., 1987, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1917?1985: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9129, 1197 p., accessed May 14, 2021 National Research Council, 2010, Selling the Nation's Helium Reserve: Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 156 p., accessed May 14, 2021 Sigler, S.M., 1994, Analyses of Natural Gases, 1993: U.S. Bureau of Mines, Information Circular 9400, 58 p., accessed May 14, 2021 U.S. Congress, 2013, Helium Stewardship Act of 2013?Public Law 110?40: U.S. Government Printing Office, 15 p., accessed May 14, 2021 U.S. Geological Survey, 2015, Geochemistry Database: U.S. Geological Survey, Provisional Database, accessed May 14, 2021