Reply #11: National Helium Reserve

[Cerridwen]

The National Helium Reserve is an American strategic reserve of over a billion cubic feet of Helium gas, stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles northwest of Amarillo, Texas in a natural geologic gas storage formation. It was established in 1925 as a supply of lifting gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Space Race and Cold War.

After the "Helium Acts Amendments of 1960" (Public Law 86–777), the U.S. Bureau of Mines arranged for five private plants to recover helium from natural gas. For this helium conservation program, the Bureau built a 425-mile pipeline from Bushton, Kansas to connect those plants with the government's partially depleted Cliffside gas field. This helium-nitrogen mixture was injected and stored in the Cliffside gas field until needed, when it then was further purified.

By 1995, a billion cubic metres of the gas had been collected and the reserve was US$1.4 billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to phase out the reserve.<1><2> The resulting "Helium Privatization Act of 1996" (Public Law 104–273) directed the United States Department of the Interior to start liquidating the reserve by 2005. a bit more at link

Thanks for asking. I never knew we had a "helium reserve".