American Oil and Gas Reporter - November 2022 - 29

finding Morrow reservoirs. The major stumbling block in
Colorado is not technical, but the state government regulations
on the petroleum industry in general. The central portion of the
Colorado Plateau in Utah is also a major focus for helium, but
the hurdle there is the BLM regulations and restrictions.
Most of the eastern United States and Canada remains unexplored.
There are also areas that are unexplored in Kansas and
the Black Mesa Basin in Arizona. Ontario was the first place
where helium was processed from the natural gas stream in the
1910s-20s. It has similar helium percentages to parts of the
Saskatchewan play that extend into Alberta and Montana.
Natural gas produced in shale plays tends to not have any
helium or nitrogen in the gas stream. The North American West
Coast is lacking in any potential in that helium source rocks are
not present, nor has the water in the rock pores been around
long enough to accumulate and hold any significant gas. Precambrian
rift systems such as those in Kansas, Iowa, Michigan,
Kentucky and Ohio may have potential areas of accumulations.
A number of operators recently have focused on the specific
composition of the helium host gas. The " green operators "
require the host gas to be nitrogen with no methane or carbon
dioxide. The disadvantage is that not having methane present
requires a considerable amount of outside power for the extraction
facility. This is typical in the helium plays in Saskatchewan and
the Holbrook Basin.
The downside is that remote areas require time to develop
new power sources and services are not cheap. When the host gas
is all carbon dioxide, how does a producer legally vent that into
the atmosphere? A solution, if possible, is to ship the CO2 by
pipeline to enhanced oil recovery projects. This is certainly true
for helium production in the Lisbon area of Utah; the McElmo
Dome in Colorado; or the Big Piney-La Barge in Wyoming. The
Mid-Continent is typically a methane-rich gas with minor amounts
of nitrogen, so cheap or relatively free power is available.
Extraction Plant
If the technical criteria are acceptable and surface issues
are not a problem, the major obstacle to helium production is
the financial cost of a helium extraction plant. These facilities
typically cost from three million to several tens of millions of
dollars, depending on flow rates and the purity of the helium
product an operator wants to achieve. To get the higher prices
for helium gas, the purity of the product sold needs to be in
excess of 99.999% pure helium. There is a small group of
companies such as Linde Inc., Quantum Technology and
IACX that can either build a helium processing plant to
operator specifications or provide a plant to do the extraction
and participate in revenues.
A number of times, various helium projects saw the operator
build a plant before production testing or comprehensive analysis
of the reservoir and the helium gas was not present in the
expected quantities. The majority of wells, but not all, with high
helium percentage (say above 3%) typically are not long-lived
producers or seemingly are associated with limited reserves.
An operator has to remember that the only real difference
between exploring for helium and natural gas is extracting
the element out of the gas stream. My book, Geology and
Production of Helium and Associated Gases (published last
spring by Elsevier), confirms that exploring for helium is no
different than searching for natural gas. The most important
exploration tool has been the simple analysis of natural gas
wells looking for anomalous helium (typically 0.3-10.0%),
or reviewing state or provincial records for previous gas
analysis with hints of anomalous helium present. This step is
the cheapest and easiest.
Surface geochemistry is also useful in mature and remote
areas such as Kansas, Arizona, Utah and Saskatchewan, and
companies such as Geofrontiers and Petro-Find Geochem
Ltd. are very helpful in this process. The migration of helium
from the upper mantle or crust utilizes discontinuities or
faulting/fracture systems to migrate into the sedimentary
section. These fault/fracture systems can be defined using
aeromagnetic basement analysis, such as the analysis performed
by Earthfield Technology.
Seismic helps define the structural closure of a trap associated
with anomalous helium readings from wellhead analysis or
surface geochemical surveys, and basement fault/fracture systems
from aeromagnetics. Seismic is very useful in finding those
structural highs, and sometimes, even " sees " the reservoir. It is
the drilling of the target that can be the most difficult, and not
because of drilling technical issues, but because of BLM
permitting and surface use regulations.
In the end, helium extraction from methane, carbon dioxide
or nitrogen stream could be of significant benefit to an
operator. The big commitment is the processing plant. However,
at current prices, investments in helium production may well
be worth it.
❒
STEVEN A. TEDESCO is owner of Running Foxes Petroleum Inc.; manager of
MRE Wind and Solar; and manager of Starfox Helium Inc. His companies
operate more than 600 coalbed methane, oil (conventional and waterflood), and
natural gas wells in Utah, Missouri, Kansas and Wyoming, and have solar and
wind assets in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Tedesco has been
involved in the resource industry for more than 40 years, and is the author of
" Geology and Production of Helium and Associated Gases, " published by Elsevier
in 2022, and " Surface Geochemistry in Petroleum Exploration, " published by
Chapman and Hall in 1995. Tedesco holds an M.S. from Southern Illinois
University and a Ph.D. from Colorado School of Mines.
NOVEMBER 2022 29
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