The industry’s highest concentration of helium could hold enough helium to solve America’s shortages in technology, medicine and space exploration.
A large helium deposit discovered in Minnesota earlier this year could ease shortages of the gas in several U.S. industries. Resource exploration company Pulsar Helium announced the results of an independent assessment of a helium drilling site near Babbitt and the data is favorable for commercial helium production, Live Science September 4 news.
The assessment estimated the volume of helium that could be recovered from a well that occupies 13% of Pulsar Helium’s land holdings in Minnesota. The results showed that the well contained 649,000 cubic meters of helium, equivalent to 1% of the helium the United States will produce in 2023 and 0.4% of global production that year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“Such a positive estimate from a relatively shallow well is very encouraging ahead of further exploration,” said Thomas Abraham-James, president and CEO of Pulsar Helium, which plans to conduct further exploration in the area and drill deeper at its current well later this year.
In June, lab tests revealed that the Minnesota mine had an industry-high 14.5% helium concentration. That’s an unusually high level, according to Jon Gluyas, professor of geoenergy, carbon capture and storage at Durham University in the UK. Gas with a helium concentration of 0.3% or higher is considered viable for commercial extraction.
Gluyas said it’s difficult to estimate how much helium the entire Minnesota deposit contains based on the new data because the rock beneath the drill site can be heterogeneous. The amount of helium stored in the rock depends on the porosity of the rock and the connectivity between the pores. Deposit characteristics are rarely consistent across large areas, so there is some variability. It’s likely that helium reserves are higher in some areas and lower in others, Gluyas explained.
Helium concentrations can also vary spatially, but because the gas moves underground and mixes in various pockets of rock, the likelihood of concentrations falling below 0.3 percent is slim. Estimating the amount of helium beneath Pulsar’s land using new data is uncertain, but Gluyas says the estimated 5 million cubic meters based on the land area Pulsar owns may not be too far off the actual volume.
The United States currently produces about 60 million cubic meters of helium, so the Pulsar mine in Minnesota could produce an additional 8.3 percent of the domestic supply in the future. Helium is a critical coolant in many fields and industries, including scientific research, medical technology, space exploration, and high-tech manufacturing. Supply chains have struggled to meet demand, leading to a global shortage for more than a decade. New data shows that the Pulsar mine has a high commercial potential.