50 U.S.C. § 167 — Definitions

This section defines terms used throughout this chapter of the law, which deals with the federal government's helium program. (1) Cliffside Field: the underground reservoir where the Federal Helium Reserve — the government's stored helium — is actually kept. (2) Federal Helium Pipeline: the pipeline system, owned by the federal government, used to move helium from the Federal Helium Reserve. (3) Federal Helium Reserve: the helium supplies that the United States owns. (4) Federal Helium System: everything that makes up the government's helium operation — the Federal Helium Reserve itself, the Cliffside Field, the Federal Helium Pipeline, and any other infrastructure the Secretary owns, leases, or manages by contract for storing, moving, taking out, purifying, or otherwise handling helium. (5) Federal user: a federal agency, or any outside recipient of one or more federal research grants, that uses helium. (6) Low-Btu gas: a fuel gas that produces less than 250 British thermal units (Btu) of heat per standard cubic foot, once you count non-burnable gases mixed in — such as nitrogen, helium, argon, and carbon dioxide. (7) Person: any individual, corporation, partnership, firm, association, trust, estate, public or private institution, or state or local government. (8) Priority pipeline access: the top spot in line for getting crude helium delivered — under it, the Secretary makes sure crude helium reaches a helium refinery through the Federal Helium System before other deliveries. (9) Qualified bidder: someone the Secretary decides is trying to buy helium either to use themselves, to refine, or to resell to other users. But a person loses "qualified bidder" status if the Secretary later decides they didn't actually meet the requirements to be one. (10) Qualifying domestic helium transaction: any purchase-and-sale deal for at least 15,000,000 standard cubic feet of crude or pure helium — whether newly made or renegotiated within the past year — inside the United States, where one side of the deal is someone who has a contract with the Secretary to accept, store, deliver, or redeliver crude helium from the Federal Helium System. (11) Refiner: a person who can take delivery of crude helium from the Federal Helium Pipeline and turn it into pure helium. (12) Secretary: the Secretary of the Interior.