Renergen's Virginia Gas Project has done the hard part of making helium. On Monday its owner, ASP Isotopes, which bought Renergen in January, said the plant had finished commissioning and reached stable production of liquid helium, which is now piling up in its cryogenic storage, the super-cold tanks that keep it liquid, ahead of first deliveries. Its first phase is designed for about 70,000 cubic feet of helium a day, alongside liquefied natural gas, which makes it the country's first project to produce both.
Those deliveries were meant to have started by now. In July, ASP Isotopes chief executive Paul Mann told an investor webinar that commercial helium deliveries would begin in September, and the company repeated that target in August, Business Day reported. Monday's update says it is still finalising logistics with its customers for the first loads, and expects the plant to reach its full design output during the fourth quarter of 2026.
A new source matters because helium is a tight market. The gas is used in making semiconductors, in medical imaging and in aerospace, and Qatar alone produced almost a third of the world's supply last year, according to US Geological Survey data. "With global helium supply under significant pressure, a new, independent source matters more than ever," Mann said in the announcement.
One buyer so far
For now, one customer has signed. ASP has a five-year take-or-pay agreement, under which the buyer pays for an agreed amount whether it takes it or not, with an Asian industrial gas company, and it covers about 15% of the helium phase one is expected to produce. Earlier company disclosures put the starting price above $600 for every 1,000 cubic feet. The aim is to have about 75% of that output under contract at similar prices, but Monday's announcement gave no update on contracted volumes and no date for when revenue from the first deliveries begins.
The much bigger plant behind it
All of this is the small version. ASP is planning a second phase about 13 times the size of the first, with a target of more than $300 million in annual revenue once it runs, a projection that depends on the project being financed, built and brought into production. The US International Development Finance Corporation and Standard Bank have committed up to $750 million in senior debt for it, subject to conditions, and the company's earlier guidance put the build at about 44 months.
So the helium is made and stored, most of it is not yet spoken for, and September has come and gone.
