Helium Now Doesn't Always Mean There’s Natgas

The world’s top producers of helium – USA, Qatar and Algeria – produce it in association with natural gas. Concentrations of helium are often 3%-4% – double that in a recent South African development – and the natural gas is normally produced and marketed as a by-product.

However, a huge probable resource of 54bn ft³ newly discovered in just one part of southwest Tanzania’s Rift Valley by Norwegian firm Helium One alongside researchers from the UK’s Durham and Oxford universities – won’t produce methane as a by-product.

“Simply put, the natural gas component is less than 1% and we therefore will produce no natural gas,” Helium One CEO Thomas Abraham-James told NGA on June 28: “It is a standalone helium resource, associated with nitrogen.”

Total known helium reserves in the USA, the world’s largest producer, are around 153bn ft³, and global consumption is 8bn ft³/yr, so researchers from Oxford and Durham have described the new Tanzanian helium find as “a game changer for the future security of society’s helium needs” such as in medical (MRI) scanners, welding, industrial leak detection, and nuclear energy.

Helium One CEO and co-founder Thomas Abraham-James (Photo credit: Helium One)

But Tanzania needn’t worry about a lack of natural gas: its estimated recoverable resources have been put at over 57 trillion ft³ by government sources, two-thirds of which are in major offshore fields that may be developed in the 2020s by firms like Shell, Statoil and ExxonMobil for LNG exports.

EIA’s more conservative end-2015 reserves figure for Tanzania was 200bn ft³ but a number of small fields are already producing for the local power generation market, with more expected to do so.

Mark Smedley | www.naturalgasafrica.com