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Caliche Development Partners II (Caliche) recently announced plans to construct the world’s largest helium salt storage cavern at Golden Triangle Storage (GTS) in Beaumont. The project will create the second helium cavern in North America, following Caliche’s development and operation of the first such cavern at Coastal Caverns.
Caliche officials stated they were honored to be trusted with the stewardship of this valuable natural resource, especially with the recent changes and possible closure of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Strategic Helium reserve. Helium not only brings joy to many in the form of balloons, but it is also critical to space exploration, semiconductor manufacture and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines.
The helium project will be the company’s first of five phases of growth at GTS, made possible under its newly received tax abatement agreements. Each phase includes utilizing one or two of the nine permitted cavern locations, two of which are presently in service in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) certificated natural gas storage.
“The GTS team brings a long history of safely storing small and valuable molecules underground,” said Dave Marchese, chief executive officer at Caliche. “Between the recent restrictions by Russia and China on United States’ access to the global helium supply, and the challenges surrounding the Federal Helium Reserve System sale, we believe GTS can help ensure a stable domestic supply for all critical end users.”
As part of GTS’ expansion plans, Caliche has issued an open season and sought authorization from FERC for expansion of its existing facility, identifying two of the permitted caverns for natural gas service. The company welcomes inquiries for its permitted and planned wells for hydrogen storage and has begun the Class VI permitting process for CO2 sequestration in recently leased subsurface zones under 4,000 contiguous acres in Jefferson County.
Caliche Development Partners II is a private equity-backed, acquisition and development company focused on the underground storage of natural gas, industrial gases like hydrogen and helium, and carbon sequestration. Based in Houston, Caliche’s projects are located in Jefferson County on the U.S. Gulf Coast (Golden Triangle Storage, GTS) and in Colusa County, California (Central Valley Gas Storage, CVGS).
The Caliche management team previously developed and sold its underground storage business (Coastal Caverns) on the historic Spindletop salt dome in Beaumont. Caliche is committed to leading infrastructure development companies in sustainability. Specifically, it is leveraging its expertise and relationships with large-scale emitters to spur the energy transition.