Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, May 13th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who asks you to give back to the place you call home. "5 to thrive" is YOUR opportunity to leave a legacy for generations to come. Support the community nonprofits you care about with a gift through the Wyoming Community Foundation. Visit wycf.org to learn more.

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A woman living in a southside apartment complex in Casper on Sunday said she heard gunshots and a plea for someone to call 911, then opened the door leading outside her building to find the body of a masked man at her feet with a gun in his hand.

Cowboy State Daily's Dale Killingbeck reports that two people were shot in the incident at Foxhill Apartments. One man was killed, and another was transported to Banner Wyoming Medical Center with an apparent gunshot wound.

"What we were told by an apartment resident below that apartment was they heard about 12 gunshots, and then she opened her door and she said she heard somebody say, somebody needs to call 911, so she grabbed her phone and ran out of into the hall, into the end where she opened the door and there was a body laying at her feet, and that was the individual that was deceased."

In a separate incident that occurred at the same time in another part of the city, an apparently accidental shooting involving a 21 year old and a 16 year old has left the teenager in a Denver hospital fighting for his life.

Read the full story HERE.

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Helium is good for a lot more than fun party tricks like floating balloons and chipmunking your voice.

It's also state of the art when it comes to coolant for rockets and semiconductors, and it's considered irreplaceable for many medical devices, including magnetic resonance imaging machines. And Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean reports that Wyoming, which already produces 20% of the world's Grade A helium from one location in Sublette County, could be home to a second source of the vital gas.

"Helium is really part of our crust in general. It's a product of radioactive decay… Helium is a very lightweight molecule… that light weight makes it slippery, very easy to escape most of the time… But a few places in the world have just the right geology, the kind of rocks that helium can't find its way out, and so that helium typically will get caught up… And so when we mine natural gas, that helium could be a byproduct if it's present in a large enough amount… in Sublette County, we already know that it's economically there in an economically feasible amount. We got the right geology… so we already have one big player there, ExxonMobil… now we have another helium company looking to set up in Sublette County and take advantage of that geology."

The company is Blue Spruce, and the project is called the Dry Piney Helium and Carbon Sequestration Project near Big Piney. The $1.5 billion project plan includes four production pads with eight wells that are expected to produce 800 million cubic feet annually of bulk liquid helium, as well as 80 million cubic feet per day of natural gas. Blue Spruce expects to begin operation in the fall of 2028.

Read the full story

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