Helium Super Summit: Helium24 updates on supply from Russia

Heliumsupply from Russia is subject to sanctions in the EU and US, but today thereare established supply routes into China, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India,Malaysia, Mexico, and the Middle East, with the Amur Gas Processing Plant byGazprom producing about 50 ISO containers of helium a month, and set to ramp upfurther.

Theupdate was from Dimitar Popcev, Chief Commercial Officer of Helium24 Group,addressing delegates earlier this week at the Helium Super Summit 2024 inHouston.

Thecompany, which has facilities in Istanbul, Doha, Moscow, Shenzhen, Hong Kong,Houston, and Belgrade, is one of the major offtakers of liquid helium producedat Gazprom’s Amur Gas Processing Plant, which it is authorised to distributeinto non-EU European countries, as well as Middle East and Asia Pacificmarkets. Helium24 also sources helium from producers outside Russia.

“Today,Amur has one plant operational and producing and a second that is mechanicallycomplete,” said Popcev. “Since its restart in September 2023, it is the largestnatural gas processing enterprise in Russia, and a large producer of helium,too.”

Thetarget for Amur is to have produced 600 ISO containers of helium this year. Thefirst plant is not yet supplying at full capacity, but each of the three Amurplants has capacity to produce 20 million cubic metres of helium per annum.

“Mostof this supply is delivered through Asia, but also many other locations,including south and central America,” said Popcev.

“Thepurity is high grade – nearly six nines, testing shows.”

Thedecision on when to start up the second plant will be dictated by marketconditions and demand, which in part is down to whether the sanctions that arein place might be a limiting factor, with the availability of high-quality ISOcontainers being one potential bottleneck. With the first plant not yet runningat capacity, the feeling, said Popcev, was that the start-up of the secondplant was still some way off.

Russianhelium supply is not confined to Amur. There are five plants at Orenburg, builtbetween 1979 and 1989, and producing up to 115 ISO containers of helium a year– or three million cubic metres.

Theother producer is Irkutsk Oil Company. Its Yaraktinsky plant was meant to beready in 2021 but was delayed and finally started up in Q2 of 2023. Itsestimated prodoction capacity currently is 12 to 14 ISO containers a month.Irkutsk also has plans for a plant at some point at Markovsky, though this iscurrently on hold because of uncertainties arising from the sanctions and theRussia–Ukraine war.

Russiais estimated to have total accessible helium reserves equivalient to 30% ofglobal reserve volumes, with three regions holding all of this supply potentialbetween them.

Theother challenge in relation to Russia and the sanctions it faces relates topayments. Today there is a lack of transparency for banks when it comes tomaking payments into Russia. There are no direct relations with Russian banks,and payments can typically take more than two weeks, without any guarantee thatdifficulties won’t arise.

Inresponse to this, Helium24 has started to actively develop the paymentinfrastructure and started to implement some non-standard but more reliablepayment methods.

Source:gasworld