Lawmakers extend federal helium sales

As lawmakers were engaged in the bitter fight that resulted in a federal shutdown, they quietly agreed to legislation that will keep sales of federally owned helium flowing. Just days before the legal authority to sell the gas from the Federal Helium Reserve was to run out, the House and Senate on 27 September agreed to a compromise bill that will avert a helium supply crunch while phasing out the reserve over eight years. President Obama is expected to sign the measure.

The Helium Stewardship Act will permit the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management to continue selling helium from the reserve. Under previous law, the BLM had been authorized to sell material only until its debt to the Treasury for helium purchases made decades ago was paid off. That milestone was to be attained in early October.

The new law will phase in over five years a market-based pricing system to replace the existing government-set sales price. Sales will continue until the reserve dwindles to 3 billion cubic feet (85 million cubic meters), a quantity that is expected to be sufficient to meet federal agencies’ demands for 15 years. As of 30 September 2012, the reserve, located in an underground storage reservoir near Amarillo, Texas, held an estimated 11.5 billion cubic feet of helium measured at atmospheric pressure.

“This legislation keeps the Federal Helium Reserve afloat, allows a fair return to taxpayers for sales of federal helium, and then gets the government out of the helium business for good,” said Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “Congress avoided a real crisis for scores of American manufacturing and technology companies employing millions of American workers. That is because without the legislation that the Senate just passed, those workers and companies would no longer have been able to get access to helium, which is a critical industrial gas without which these companies cannot operate.”

“I am both elated and relieved that Congress has gotten this done,” said Michael Turner, president of the American Physical Society, in a statement. “Helium illustrates one of the many connections between research, the economy and advanced healthcare in this country.”

Writing for the website Politico, Turner and low-temperature physicist Moses Chan had warned that a hiatus in supply could jeopardize research at universities and national labs aimed at developing the next generation of magnetic resonance imaging and semiconductor technologies. They said that research facilities that require liquid helium to operate, including the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, would be threatened and that universities could be forced to terminate the work of their researchers.

The Office of Management and Budget said in a statement that the reserve accounts for 42% of US helium production and supplies 35% of the world helium demand. Because the reserve is self-funded, its operation will continue through the government shutdown.