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Microcap & Penny Stocks : NAMX -- North American Expl.-- Que Sera Sera! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: M. M. Jones who wrote (3200)	3/31/1998 7:05:00 PM
From: M. M. Jones	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4736

See the following for what I've found about the relation of natural gas to helium gas. If UPR is only "mulling the sale" of its gas gathering operations, and if UPR truly does sit on "the U.S. mother lode of helium gas", then UPR must be trying to destroy NAMX with this news release. UPR's concern over NAMX's claim would explain Mark Shoemaker's attacks on NAMX of many months ago. It is not unusual for a large company to try to destroy a small company or its product that in one way or another threatens the profits of the large company. If NAMX has a strong claim on the "mother lode", UPR will not hesitate to do anything to destroy NAMX, IMO. NAMX may not have the financial resources to fight this. But they may have the moral resources. I hope they will call on every resource and NOT QUIT! Note that UPR is only "examining the possibility" of selling its gas gathering operations. Would they really sell the "US mother lode of helium" -- IF that is what is there? "...Supplies of helium are finite and irreplaceable. Although the atmosphere contains the vast bulk of the world's helium, about 700,000 billion cubic feet (BCF), it is at such small concentration (0.0005%) that the energy cost of recovering it is prohibitive. The remaining helium, about 1120 BCF, is a constituent of some natural gas (methane) fields. Of these fields, helium is most inexpensively recoverable from the so-called "helium- rich" fields, defined as fields containing more than 0.3% helium. Helium-rich fields are found only in the U.S. and to a small extent in Canada. About 85% of the helium-rich U.S. resources are in the large Hugoton and Panhandle fields covering parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, and in the Riley Ridge fields of southwest Wyoming. "Most of the helium in gas fields outside the U.S. is at a concentration less than 0.1%. Based on the reasonable assumption that extraction energy costs are proportional to the inverse of the helium concentration, the energy required to extract helium from a helium- rich U.S. field is considerably less than the corresponding energy for extraction from fields elsewhere in the world. The actual costs in dollars of helium extraction from the gas fields, however, are not easily compared, since those costs depend on the economic worth of the methane that contains the helium. However, the U.S. is the world's major producer, consumer and exporter of helium. Typically, exports account for about one third of total domestic production. For example, in 1992 the U.S. exported 1.09 BCF, far more than all the rest of the world produced, and consumed 2.26 BCF domestically; about 0.3 BCF of this domestic consumption is by U.S. agencies, mainly NASA and the DOD. U.S. helium sales have increased from .67 BCF in 1970, to 1.1 BCF in 1980, to 3.5 BCF in 1995. "About 6.9 BCF of helium is contained in the natural gas pumped from U.S. wells each year. About 3.3 BCF is extracted by helium producers for domestic and foreign consumption; 0.36 BCF is lost to the atmosphere during the extraction process; and the other 3.2 BCF is simply lost to the atmosphere during the burning of natural gas. Thus, the rate at which helium is depleted depends in large part on the rate of natural gas consumption. Some 10% of the total production of refined helium in the United States presently is performed by the Bureau of Mines, using facilities dating from 40 to 60 years ago; this helium production just about meets U.S. agency needs. The remaining 3.0 BCF annual helium production is extracted by private producers and sold to private consumers...." Etc.