Air Products, desiring stable helium market, heads to Congress

[TexasTowelie]

Air Products wants Congress to tweak a nearly century-old law to encourage domestic helium production amid an imminent shutdown of the government's stockpile of the gas.

The Helium Extraction Act of 2017 would add two dozen words to the Mineral Leasing Act, enabling companies to maintain a mineral lease if they're using it solely to extract helium from natural gas drawn from federal land. Currently, companies can lose leases after a decade if they're not using them to produce either oil or natural gas.

Walter L. Nelson, vice president and manager of Air Products' global helium business, said the added language is crucial to stabilizing the global helium market, given that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management plans to sell off its assets in the Federal Helium Reserve by September 2021.

Nelson will offer testimony on a "discussion draft" of the bill at a House of Representatives committee hearing on Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-air-products-helium-congress-minerals-act-20170618-story.html

[DetlefK]

1. This is actually very important for scientists.

We have more and more lab-equipment that uses Helium-cryostats. And Helium-3 is especially precious, not just for cutting-edge cryostats but also as a fuel for future fusion-reactors.