In 1903, residents of the small city of Dexter, Kansas, gathered to have a good time a newly drilled pure fuel properly.
Crowds flocked to the properly for the lighting of the escaping fuel, which officers had mentioned would produce “an incredible pillar of flame.” However once they rolled a burning bale of hay onto the properly, nothing occurred.
An evaluation in 1905 revealed that a lot of the fuel was nonflammable nitrogen, simply 15% was methane — and rather less than 2% was a colorless, odorless, elusive component that scientists had found just a few many years earlier. This marked the primary discovery of helium in a pure fuel subject.
At present, helium is an important cooling element in nuclear reactors, rockets and medical diagnostic tools akin to MRI machines. The fuel retains fiber optics, superconductors, quantum computer systems and semiconductors cool, however skyrocketing demand has pushed provide chains to their restrict, leading to a world scarcity that has continued for greater than a decade. Helium extraction additionally has an enormous carbon footprint — nearly equal to the U.Okay.’s per yr — as a result of at the moment, it’s solely produced along with pure fuel.
Nevertheless, lately, pioneering discoveries have led to a pivotal change in scientists’ understanding of the geology that helps helium accumulate. Researchers have uncovered reservoirs of main, “carbon-free” helium — giant accumulations of the fuel which might be extremely concentrated and do not include methane — that would revolutionize the business.
This new understanding has fueled exploration tasks in a handful of areas around the globe. From Yellowstone to Greenland to the East African Rift, a helium “rush” is beginning to handle shortages and helium’s monumental carbon footprint.
“It is a new business,” Thomas Abraham-James, co-founder and CEO of the exploration firm Pulsar Helium, informed Dwell Science.
Excellent seals, imperfect yields
After World Battle I, helium discoveries multiplied and the U.S. emerged because the world’s main producer. Fuel wells with helium ranges of 0.3% and above have been tapped to gasoline a rising variety of industries and kind a stockpile, the Federal Helium Reserve in Amarillo, Texas. (The stockpile was bought in 2024 to the economic fuel agency Messer.)
However helium has been produced solely as a minor byproduct, normally discovered in tiny quantities combined in with pure gases akin to methane.
That is as a result of gases like methane and carbon dioxide (CO2) are required to move helium from the center a part of Earth’s crust to shallower areas, Chris Ballentine, a professor of geochemistry on the College of Oxford, informed Dwell Science in an electronic mail.
Helium types within the high 16 miles (25 kilometers) of Earth’s crust when uranium and thorium break down into different radioactive components, emitting alpha particles, or helium nuclei, within the course of. These helium nuclei achieve two electrons from atoms of their atmosphere to kind helium atoms, which then migrate and progressively acquire in groundwater right down to 10 miles (16 km) under Earth’s floor, Ballentine mentioned.
However for helium atoms to kind a fuel, they should attain their “bubble level” — the focus of a dissolved fuel in a liquid required to make buoyant fuel bubbles. Helium in groundwater not often accumulates in ample portions to achieve this bubble level, Ballentine mentioned. So different, extra ubiquitous gases, like methane and CO2, are usually wanted to entrain helium and kind the bubbles that rise towards geological traps, Ballentine mentioned.
These geological traps are sometimes pure fuel fields. However helium additionally will get trapped, as a result of pure fuel fields typically have robust seals, analysis suggests.
Pure fuel reservoirs kind beneath layers of fine-grained “cap” rocks “and minerals. In Australia’s Amadeus Basin, for instance, helium and pure fuel are locked beneath a thick layer of salt, which is a “excellent” seal, Jon Gluyas, a professor of geoenergy, carbon seize and storage at Durham College within the U.Okay., informed Dwell Science.
Most locations, nonetheless, haven’t got a wonderfully sealed reservoir to lure helium underground, so the fuel escapes into the ambiance. “All methods are leaky,” Gluyas mentioned. Consequently, most areas with helium-producing rocks emit some helium, so “in case you went out with a delicate sufficient instrument, you’ll discover it,” he mentioned.
Helium’s affiliation with pure fuel means producers can extract each on the similar time, however this method has main drawbacks. For one, the helium business at the moment has an oblique carbon footprint of about 350 million tons (320 million metric tons) per yr, which is larger than all however 20 nations’ carbon footprints.
A second draw back is that nations with pure fuel deposits and the businesses drilling these deposits management the world’s provide of helium. The U.S. used to dominate international helium manufacturing, however Qatar took the lead in 2022. Relying on different nations for helium introduces dangers associated to regional geopolitics, Gluyas mentioned. Algeria and Russia are additionally main helium producers, elevating related issues.
However the largest drawback with helium extraction is that pure fuel incorporates minuscule quantities of helium. Within the U.S., the decrease worthwhile restrict to separate helium from pure fuel is 0.3%, however some nations with completely different manufacturing and transport strategies have a lot smaller thresholds. For instance, Algeria’s Hassi R’Mel fuel subject incorporates 0.19% helium and Qatar’s North Dome deposits include 0.04% helium, but each nations extract helium at these places.
Groundbreaking discoveries
Information present that solely about 1 in 6 pure fuel reservoirs within the U.S. has helium ranges increased than 0.3% and that ranges above 7% are extraordinarily uncommon, which means economically helpful helium concentrations are the exception within the U.S.
The pattern is related in different nations. So when scientists discovered a nitrogen fuel reservoir that contained as much as 10.4% helium in Tanzania in 2016, they have been flabbergasted. The fuel was effervescent out of the bottom within the Rukwa Rift Basin, which is situated on a divergent plate boundary known as the East African Rift.
Crucially, the Rukwa Rift Basin would not have reservoirs of pure fuel or different hydrocarbons. This was the primary main confirmed discovery of a hydrocarbon-free helium reservoir, and it sparked an ongoing worldwide hunt for different such reservoirs.
Ballentine, Gluyas and Abraham-James have been a part of the staff that made the invention in Tanzania. “The method we adopted basically is much like that which any explorer would use for petroleum — we went searching for seeps,” Gluyas mentioned. Helium seeps are “all around the present,” he mentioned, however finding them is trickier than discovering petroleum as a result of helium is odorless, colorless and normally at low concentrations.
From then on, researchers and exploration corporations tried to find out whether or not recognized helium seeps led to hydrocarbon-free reservoirs with excessive concentrations of the noble fuel. In 2021, for instance, the exploration firm Pulsar Helium acquired land close to Babbitt, Minnesota, the place an organization looking for nickel had beforehand discovered fuel with excessive helium concentrations. Pulsar Helium drilled a properly right down to 2,200 toes (670 meters) in early 2024 and discovered an enormous fuel reservoir with helium concentrations as much as 14.5% — the very best the business has ever seen in North America.
The opposite gases within the reservoir have been nitrogen and CO2. However the web site incorporates no pure fuel, so it counts as a main helium accumulation, Pulsar Helium representatives say. CO2 concentrations have been above 70%, however the firm views this as an alternative reasonably than an issue, as a result of the fuel is pure sufficient for use for carbonated drinks, water remedy, meals preservation and drugs.
Distinctive geology
The extra reservoirs of hydrocarbon-free helium that researchers and corporations discover, the extra data they be taught concerning the geology that types these reservoirs. Shortly after the invention in Tanzania, geologists recognized 5 key circumstances wanted to kind accumulations of helium with out pure fuel.
First, the area should have helium-producing rocks miles under the floor. The most effective helium supply rocks are ones that include uranium or thorium, and are normally composed solely of crystallized minerals, Gluyas, Ballentine and their colleagues wrote in a 2024 article for the Power Geoscience Convention Sequence.
That is as a result of crystalline rocks solidify from magma cooling extraordinarily slowly underground. This unhurried course of concentrates radioactive uranium and thorium, that are unstable components in mineral constructions and due to this fact among the many final to be included. Granite is likely one of the greatest helium sources, Ballentine mentioned.
Ideally, the rocks also needs to be tons of of tens of millions to billions of years outdated, as a result of the radioactive variations of uranium and thorium that decay into alpha particles have half lives of 4.5 billion and 14 billion years, respectively, in accordance with the article. Which means it might take that lengthy for half of a pattern of these components to decay into helium. Consequently, it takes tens of millions of years to build up sufficient helium to fill a big reservoir.
The second criterion wanted to kind a hydrocarbon-free helium reservoir is a warmth supply across the rocks.
Usually, helium is frozen in a mineral’s lattice construction as a result of that construction is “blocked” — or would not change molecules with its environment. For minerals to launch that helium, they need to exceed their “closure temperature” — the temperature at which the lattice turns into unblocked. That temperature varies, however could be above about 160 F (70 C) for one of the crucial frequent helium-containing minerals.
Typically the supply of warmth is volcanism or geothermal warmth, so hydrocarbon-free helium reservoirs usually happen in areas the place there’s, or as soon as was, volcanism. Beneath the Rukwa Rift Basin, for instance, jap Africa is pulling away from the remainder of the continent, inflicting magma to rise to the floor. Equally, Pulsar Helium’s exploration web site in Minnesota sits on an historical tear in North America’s crust known as the Midcontinent Rift System. This rift system began after which failed about 1.1 billion years in the past, producing intense volcanic exercise throughout the roughly 100,000 years it was lively.
The third situation to kind a hydrocarbon-free helium reservoir is the presence of nitrogen in groundwater, as a result of nitrogen bubbles can transport helium upward via the crust in the identical approach methane and CO2 bubbles can, whereas fully eradicating greenhouse gases.
The fourth situation is the necessity for comparatively hermetic “cap rocks” that sit close to the floor above the helium-forming rocks in Earth’s crust. That is as a result of when nitrogen reaches its bubble level, it captures helium atoms and taxies them till the gases both escape into the ambiance or are trapped. However for that to occur, the cap rocks should kind an impermeable seal.
The fifth and last situation is that these cap rocks should sit atop fractured, porous “reservoir” rocks that may retailer fuel, Ballentine, Gluyas and their colleagues wrote within the 2024 article.
The expansion charge of a reservoir relies on the charges at which gases enter from under and escape by way of cracks within the seal, the researchers wrote. The extra helium that enters a reservoir and the much less that escapes via the seal, the larger an accumulation can get. In different phrases, reservoirs ideally have porous or extremely fragmented rocks down under, and nonporous, intact rocks above.
Helium reservoirs with impermeable seals can maintain gases for lengthy durations of geological time. For instance, the hyperlink between the reservoir in Minnesota and the Midcontinent Rift System suggests helium has been build up there for 1.1 billion years.
Appraisal and improvement
Pulsar Helium lately introduced that it’ll begin engineering work for a helium manufacturing plant at its web site in Minnesota, signaling that hydrocarbon-free, U.S.-produced helium may attain the market in just some years.
Early this yr, the corporate greater than doubled the depth of its first properly to achieve the underside of the reservoir and drilled a second properly down to five,638 toes (1,718 m). Checks over the summer time confirmed excessive movement charges to the floor and steady helium concentrations of as much as 8% at each wells, “offering a strong basis for future improvement,” Abraham-James mentioned in a September assertion. Since then, Pulsar Helium has drilled a further properly down to three,507 toes (1,069 m) and opened two extra wells.
Pulsar Helium can be progressing with a helium mission in East Greenland — the primary helium discovery on the island, Abraham-James informed Dwell Science.
“What we have realized in Minnesota and elsewhere, we then utilized it to Greenland and we discovered the helium there,” he mentioned. “Like Minnesota, its helium is just not related to hydrocarbons. We performed a seismic survey final yr, and that went some methods to mapping the reservoir.”
Positioned about 3 miles (5 km) from the coastal settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit, the positioning in East Greenland seems to be promising for helium and geothermal power manufacturing, which may restrict the settlement’s dependency on fossil fuels, Abraham-James mentioned. Mapping in 2024 revealed a zone of crust with temperatures reaching 266 F (130 C), in addition to a fractured reservoir that researchers linked to fuel emissions on the floor containing as much as 0.8% helium, in accordance with an announcement from Pulsar Helium.
Any helium produced in East Greenland would probably go to the local people, Abraham-James mentioned. Equally, helium produced in Minnesota could be bought contained in the U.S. to provide MRI scanners, semiconductor fabrication and house launches, he mentioned.
Helium shortages within the U.S. have eased considerably since early 2024, partly due to extra provides from pure fuel fields, mentioned Nicholas Fitzkee, a professor of chemistry at Mississippi State College. “However having a bigger home provide could be useful, as a result of it may insulate the U.S. from geopolitical instabilities which have contributed to previous helium shortages,” Fitzkee informed Dwell Science in an electronic mail.
Midway throughout the globe, prospecting in Tanzania can be ongoing, with two exploration corporations at the moment reporting helium ranges of 5.5% and 2.46% at completely different ends of the Rukwa Rift Basin. Referred to as Helium One World and Noble Helium, these corporations are nonetheless within the early phases of exploration, Gluyas mentioned.
“Each Helium One and Noble Helium have efficiently proven elevated concentrations of helium within the wells they’ve drilled,” he mentioned. However these wells do not present a transparent image of the reservoir but, and the reservoir might not find yourself fulfilling researchers’ expectations.
“They might speculate, based mostly upon the seismic data, what the geometry of the buildup is likely to be, however they have not but drilled ample wells to say, ‘It truly is that,'” Gluyas mentioned.
Past Tanzania, there could also be alternatives for helium exploration in India’s Bakreswar-Tantloi geothermal space, which is situated within the east of the nation and straddles the states of West Bengal and Jharkhand. The Bakreswar-Tantloi space sits on historical granitic rocks which might be wealthy in uranium and due to this fact produce helium. The area additionally has a fault system and a excessive warmth gradient because of ongoing tectonic exercise alongside the Son-Narmada-Tapti rift zone, analysis suggests.
Nearer to dwelling, researchers are analyzing the circumstances for potential helium accumulations beneath and round Yellowstone Nationwide Park. Yellowstone is rooted within the Wyoming Craton, a prehistoric area of crust and higher mantle that incorporates 3.5 billion-year-old rocks recognized to provide big portions of helium. Because of Yellowstone’s numerous geothermal options and volcanic constructions, helium could also be accumulating in reservoirs beneath or peripheral to the park, though it is extra probably that the fuel is circulating and escaping into the ambiance via a fancy system of pure pipes.
“What’s occurred over the tens of millions or tons of of tens of millions of years within the space through which Yellowstone happens is that helium has been build up, and now within the final [roughly] 5 million years, the supervolcano beneath is flushing it out,” Gluyas defined.
Which means the possibilities of extracting this helium are distant, not least due to the scorching temperatures of as much as 275 F (135 C) that drillers would encounter belowground. “Will your drilling tools survive? Nearly definitely not,” Gluyas mentioned.
However past Yellowstone, it is vital for current hydrocarbon-free helium tasks to finish their evaluations and begin promoting the fuel as quickly as attainable, Gluyas mentioned. “There’s a big want for helium,” he mentioned.
Nevertheless, Fitzkee sees one other approach ahead — rolling out applied sciences that may recycle or decrease our helium consumption. That might be via putting in helium restoration methods or engineering room-temperature alternate options to present helium-hungry applied sciences, he added.
Topping up our helium provide is an efficient stopgap answer, however not a everlasting repair, he argued.
“Finally, we can’t mine our approach out of future helium shortages,” he mentioned. “Helium is non-renewable, and now we have no simple method to make extra at scale.”
