{"id":2169,"date":"2010-03-16T20:00:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T01:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/?p=2169"},"modified":"2010-03-18T13:41:44","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T18:41:44","slug":"geologic-helium-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/2010\/03\/geologic-helium-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"geologic helium machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n[A portion of the Cliffside field snakes tentacles across flat pasture concealing ancient anticlines<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Just outside Amarillo, Texas, the Cliffside field<\/a> stores much of the nation’s helium reserves in a naturally-occurring geologic dome. It is part of a complex<\/a> of partially-privatized fields, mines, domes, and pipelines which extends nearly two hundred miles north-south, from the Texas Panhandle to Oklahoma. A recent article<\/a> in Seed Magazine<\/em> describes the complex, whose helium stockpile is by far the world’s largest, and its role in the increasing global scarcity of helium, which is a critical element in a number of industrial and scientific processes, yet relatively easily escapes the earth’s atmosphere for outer space.<\/p>\n

This industrial landscape is only possible due to the particular geologic conditions of the region: beds composed primarily of “Brown dolomite” are sufficiently receptive to helium (having been discovered because they contained natural — though less concentrated — helium reserves), while the “Panhandle lime formation”, which is layered immediately on top of those beds, provides a natural “caprock”, penetrated only by the airtight injection wells (PDF<\/a>). With those wells, production plants<\/a>, maintenance roads, and pipelines running across the surface of these formations to prosthetically adapt bedrock to use in industrial process, the ground itself has assumed a hybridized and mechanical nature, comprising a very literal landscape machine.<\/p>\n

I’ve noted before<\/a> Pierre Belanger’s predictions<\/a> about the bio-physical landscape as infrastructure, which he describes as having been “historically suppressed”<\/em>, but ripe for resurgence as “a collective system of essential services, resources, and agents that generates and supports urban economies”<\/em>. While the helium industry may not have a very long future, perhaps the geo-physical landscape has also been overlooked, and may also be useful to the development of such a system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[A portion of the Cliffside field snakes tentacles across flat pasture concealing ancient anticlines.] Just outside Amarillo, Texas, the Cliffside field stores much of the nation’s helium reserves in a naturally-occurring geologic dome. It is part of a complex of partially-privatized fields, mines, domes, and pipelines which extends nearly two hundred miles north-south, from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[353,15,3,43],"tags":[245,361,247],"class_list":["post-2169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futures","category-infrastructure","category-landscape","category-landscape-architecture","tag-geology","tag-helium","tag-landscape-infrastructures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2172,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions\/2172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/m.ammoth.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}