engineering

National Helium Reserve

National Helium Reserve is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand National Helium Reserve rather than just read about it. In short: The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, was a strategic reserve of the United States, which once held over 1 billion cubic meters (about 170,000,000 kg) of helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome reservoir.

Key takeaways

National Helium Reserve belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect National Helium Reserve to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of National Helium Reserve from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The National Helium Reserve, also known as the Federal Helium Reserve, was a strategic reserve of the United States, which once held over 1 billion cubic meters (about 170,000,000 kg) of helium gas. The helium is stored at the Cliffside Storage Facility about 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Amarillo, Texas, in a natural geologic gas storage formation, the Bush Dome reservoir. The reserve was established with the enactment of the Helium Act of 1925. The strategic supply provisioned the noble gas for airships, and in the 1950s became an important source of coolant during the Cold War and Space Race. The facilities were located close to the Hugoton and other natural gas fields in southwest Kansas and the panhandle of Oklahoma, plus the Panhandle Field in Texas. These fields contained natural gas with unusually high percentages of helium—from 0.3% to 2.7%—and constitute the United States' largest helium source. The helium is separated as a byproduct from the produced natural gas. After the Helium Acts Amendments of 1960 (Public Law 86–666), 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 (684 km) 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 Congress to begin phasing out the reserve in 1996. The resulting Helium Privatization Act of 1996 (Public Law 104–273) directed the Department of the Interior to start selling off the reserve by 2005.

Government sales flooded the market with cheap helium, causing much of the private helium industry to shut down; the facility remained in government hands. The Helium Stewardship Act of 2013 mandated higher prices but a continued selldown to 3 billion ft3 (85 million m3) remaining by October 1, 2018, which was achieved with auctions. It also set a deadline of September, 30, 2021 for sale of the reserve. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) transferred the reserve to the General Services Administration (GSA) as surplus property, but a 2022 auction failed to finalize a sale. On June 22, 2023, the GSA announced a new auction of the facilities and remaining helium. The auction of the last helium assets was due to take place in November, 2023. Though the last of the Cliffside reserve was to be sold by November 2023, more natural gas was discovered at the site than was previously known, and the Bureau of Land Management extended the auction to January 25, 2024 to allow for increased bids. In 2024 the remaining reserve was sold to the highest bidder, Messer Group.

See also Helium production in the United States Masterson, Texas Helium storage and conservation Strategic natural gas reserve

Notes

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with National Helium Reserve

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what National Helium Reserve claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to National Helium Reserve before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about National Helium Reserve ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of National Helium Reserve

In research: National Helium Reserve appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses National Helium Reserve in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: National Helium Reserve is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American organizations established in 1925, Buildings and structures in Potter County, Texas, Helium, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for National Helium Reserve outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “National Helium Reserve” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study National Helium Reserve in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what National Helium Reserve means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain National Helium Reserve out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is National Helium Reserve in simple terms?

Why does National Helium Reserve matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study National Helium Reserve?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on National Helium Reserve.