Texas Times Weekly - The Helium Capital

Op-Ed

Texas Times Weekly - The Helium Capital

By: Sen. John Cornyn

When scientists in France and England discovered helium 140 years ago, their eyes were on the sun, not on Texas. Yet decades later, the Lone Star State became the epicenter of the "lifting gas," and Amarillo gained the title "Helium Capital of the World." Still today, the federal helium facility northwest of Amarillo accounts for a third of the world's supply of helium.

The European astronomers first identified helium when they were studying a solar eclipse and spotted a previously undetected yellow atmospheric band around the sun. Another 27 years would pass before scientists discovered helium in minerals on Earth.

As researchers learned that natural gas deposits are the leading source of helium, they went to big fields of natural gas in Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma. In Texas, the hunt led to the Petrolia oilfield near Wichita Falls. The federal government built the nation's first helium extraction plant there in 1915. A full-scale plant was built in the Fort Worth area in 1921.

In these years surrounding World War I, extraction of helium primarily supported the needs and interests of the U.S. Army and Navy. During the 1920s, large airships, including the U.S. Navy's "Shenandoah," routinely docked near the Fort Worth helium plant.

In 1925, the Helium Act created the Federal Helium Program and assigned responsibility for all U.S. helium production to the federal government. The government built the first of several helium facilities in the Amarillo area in 1929.

American industries continually discovered new uses for helium. The most obvious include blimps first launched by Goodyear 80 years ago. But helium's versatility goes beyond blimps and party balloons. It is used in arc welding, in the manufacture of fiber optics, computer chips and consumer electronics, and for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in medicine.

Texas has a high profile in the consumption of helium. NASA utilizes it in many ways, including pressurization of space shuttle fuel tanks. NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility at Palestine in East Texas also depends on helium. This facility has launched more than 1,700 scientific balloons since 1963, providing research in such areas as atmospheric sciences, astronomy and physics.

Sulphur Springs in North Texas is home to Aerostar International's Aerospace Balloon Engineering and Manufacturing Facility, which produces gigantic, high-altitude scientific balloons for NASA and the U.S. military.

Just as it put the federal government in the helium business in 1925, Congress started removing it 70 years later. The Helium Privatization Act of 1996 limited the future role of the federal government in helium by requiring it to discontinue the production and refining of helium, and to sell the helium stockpile by 2015.

The worldwide demand for helium continues to grow, and some experts are cautioning about a possible shortage of helium. Future needs will depend more and more on supplies produced by private industry here and abroad.

Forty years ago, Amarillo erected its Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of helium. Each of the columns contains a time capsule - with artifacts and information sealed in a helium atmosphere - telling the story of the industry. One was opened in 1993 and the other three will be opened on future anniversaries, the last on the 1,000th anniversary.

As future generations open these time capsules, they will realize what we know today - that the contributions of Amarillo and Texas to the development of the helium industry have earned a preeminent and enduring place in history.

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