SENATE BILL: Helium Exploration Act (Law'd)

[Anna Komnene]

Hello Senators!

The reason I originally came up with this bill along with Senator TJ was in order to create a solution for the impending national helium shortage (IRL).  Helium is a rare, depleting, and, non-renewable resource.  It's used most importantly to operate MRI technology in hospitals.  Two of the major problems are one, that helium's prices are artificially low because people like to have cheap floating balloons for birthday parties - and two, that those artificially low prices along with the resulting shortage lead to rising hospital costs and diminishing incentive for energy exploration companies to mine for helium on it's own.  Most of the time, helium is extracted while drilling for natural gas, but if we are to have enough of it going forward, we really need companies that specifically target helium.

Clause 3 is meant to help combat the balloon demand problem by reducing the amount of helium used for them.  Talking with TJ about it, he said that a pure helium mix isn't actually necessary for the balloons to float.  Mixing helium with a gas like neon would achieve the same result (TJ could probably explain this better than I can).  Considering that we really need helium for more important activities like medical procedures and welding, I think we can afford to limit it's usage for floating party balloons.

Clause 1 is meant to help solve the demand problem by providing the incentive to mine for the gas on it's own.  In addition, it makes it more likely that we can continue to benefit from helium  within Atlasia instead of becoming dependent on reserves in places like Qatar and Algeria.

And I think Clause 2 is self explanatory, providing funds for research into improvements in helium extraction technology.

[Anna Komnene]

Well I'm not sure it's even possible to nationalize helium because it's current extraction methods are integrated into natural gas infrastructure.

Even if it was, the government's involvement in helium, as I understand it, is part of the reason we're even having this issue in the first place.  The US has a national helium reserve, and the government has been selling those reserves at below market rates for decades while not doing enough to restock the supply on it's own.  Why?  I don't know - maybe the government just isn't that interested in helium.  Contrary to popular belief, the public sector is subject to supply and demand too - it just works a bit differently.

I think it'd be much better to help create an incentive for people to mine helium on their own.  That way we are more likely to increase the supply of helium - which has been the problem all along.  It's not like this bill prevents the public sector from being involved in helium.