The war in Iran, and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has unfortunately made us all familiar with details of the petroleum supply chain that we could formerly happily ignore.
Excellent piece. Just wanted to flag that you have "billion" instead of "million" at the beginning of the piece for your chart which confused me for a while:
"Worldwide Helium Production
Helium production by country in 2024, in billions of cubic meters."
The USGS source is using million, and the rest of the article pretty clearly implies million is the correct order of magnitude.
Great piece—really clear explanation of why helium matters, the connection to natural gas, and the fragility of the supply chain.
One thing that stands out is that if we want more helium, lower prices, and less exposure to geopolitical chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, the most direct lever is increasing natural gas output.
It's worth noting that we already know where significant untapped gas resources exist. In the U.S. alone, there are vast proven reserves in places like Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and portions of the Marcellus Shale that remain undeveloped due to permitting restrictions, environmental rules, and other legal barriers. Similar dynamics exist globally, where known gas fields are delayed or left undeveloped. Many of these resources likely contain helium as well.
Bringing new supply online has become increasingly difficult. In the U.S. and other Western countries, it can take a decade or more to get new projects approved—if they are approved at all—while in other parts of the world projects can move from decision to approval almost immediately, often at a fraction of the cost.
If supply constraints of helium and natural gas are driving shortages, price volatility, and security risks, then policy has to be part of the solution.
The permitting bottleneck is real, but there's a interesting wrinkle: the newest helium-specific plays like Pulsar Helium in Minnesota and Desert Mountain Energy in Arizona are drilling formations where helium concentrations run 5-10%, versus the ~0.3% you'd get as a natural gas byproduct. If those projects scale, they'd partially decouple helium supply from the natural gas policy debate entirely.
The capitalization implied by this transaction implies this is not consequential? Why can they buy the rights to a significant potential expansion for under $1M?
Thank you for sharing this; I wasn't familiar with those projects. And that’s a fair point—new primary-helium discoveries like Pulsar’s Minnesota project sound like they could be genuinely important. High-grade 5–10%+ helium reservoirs could diversify supply over time.
But they don’t eliminate the core issue: those projects still require additional drilling permits, infrastructure approvals, ongoing compliance hurdles that have to be overcome, etc. before they produce at scale.
So if permitting bottlenecks and other legal/regulatory barriers constrain resource development generally (adding significant time, cost, and uncertainty), they constrain helium-specific projects too. These discoveries may diversify helium supply—but the fundamental problem remains.
Ah, a slight revision to this: "Because helium is a byproduct of natural gas extraction, and because only some natural gas fields have helium in appreciable quantities, a small number of countries are responsible for the world’s supply of helium. The US and Qatar together produce around 2/3rds of the world’s helium supply. Russia, Algeria, Canada, China, and Poland produce most of the remaining balance."
The method of extraction from natural gas is distillation - cool the gas, take out the methane, the propane etc etc as they liquefy until the only atmosphere left is the helium. OK. The cost of that cooling is high, therefore you require a gas with high He content to make it worthwhile.
Ahh, but. Making LNG is doing the first part of that already. So, making LNG covers those first - and major - costs of having to cool down the vast bulk of the material. So, getting helium from an LNG train means that you can profitably extract from a much lower He concentration on the original gas.
LNG has hugely increased the recoverable He resources out there.
Also, this is why Qatar now produces He - from their LNG trains.
Thanks for writing this. Very timely. It reminds me that I need to write a piece on helium exploration, of which I have been involved in two projects so far — why it is harder to trap than natural gas, and why only a few fields have helium content.
Lovely piece. The Helium shock for MRIs is particularly bad for countries like India, where most machines are refurbished machines from the gas guzzling era. I wrote about it here: https://www.ranganaut.com/p/the-helium-shock-a-case-study-in
Asking for a friend with a summer birthday, what about party balloons? 🎈😃
I did the math. Apparently party balloons are ~8% of world demand.
With 30% of supply offline, unfortunately party balloons (+ weather balloons and blimps) do not solve the problem. To Brian’s point, helium is hard to replace…
Ahem! You do not cool yourself by sweating. You cool yourself by turning water into steam in your lungs, and expelling said steam. You sweat because after you expelled water vapor, your salt balance went up and you have to expel the salt. This is why sweat is very salty.
It takes 1 "therm" to raise water by 1 degree celcius. It takes 80 therms to raise ice to water. It takes 540 (that's five hundred and forty!) "therms" to raise water to steam. Turning water into steam in your lungs is a very effective way of ripping heat out of your both.
This 540 marker works the other way also. This is why steam burns are so bad- the steam is hitting your skin and cooling to water.
The diagrams here express these numbers as time given a constant amount of heat input or heat extraction:
> In humans, sweating is primarily a means of thermoregulation, which is achieved by the water-rich secretion of the eccrine glands. Maximum sweat rates of an adult can be up to 2–4 litres (0.5–1 US gal) per hour or 10–14 litres (2.5–3.5 US gal) per day, but is less in children prior to puberty.[3][4][5] Evaporation of sweat from the skin surface has a cooling effect due to evaporative cooling. Hence, in hot weather, or when the individual's muscles heat up due to exertion, more sweat is produced. Animals with few sweat glands, such as dogs, accomplish similar temperature regulation results by panting, which evaporates water from the moist lining of the oral cavity and pharynx.
Thank you for the very informative, timely article.
You wrote: "But modern MRI machines are “zero boil-off,” which essentially never need to be recharged with helium."
Since helium is used to cool superconducting magnets for both MRI machines and semiconductor production, is the “zero boil-off” technique used in the case of semiconductors, and if not, is there something making it not applicable in that context?
So the US has its own Rare Earth equivalent, especially in a Strait of Hormuz is down world (Qatar out)? Interesting
Lots of ways to trim use. Cut the balloons, Nitrogen works for leak detection and welding, and MRIs can be replaced with CAT scans (which give better info without the Helium)
Anything that results in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_decay , or those five parts per million could be distilled from ordinary air. Shortage would have to get pretty severe - or fusion reactors would have to be commercially viable for other reasons - before serious exploitation of such sources would make economic sense.
In the table showing the He component in natural gas from various wells is that a weight fraction or an atomic fraction? If it is a weight fraction that makes the atomic fraction huge.
We could eventually ramp up production of He from wells outside the Middle East, but it takes time to build the plants to do so.
I suspect that a hydrogen powered blimp could be successful. For one thing, hydrogen is four times lighter than helium so the lifting power would be much greater. This should be a longer discussion, but I’ve read that the tragic fire of the Hindenburg was from the cloth cover and wood frame, not the hydrogen. Hydrogen being so light if there is a leak it floats upward. It doesn’t drop down and pool as gasoline might.
Oh good. When I woke up, I was wondering what would worry me today. Now I know. But seriously, a very good, very interesting piece.
Excellent piece. Just wanted to flag that you have "billion" instead of "million" at the beginning of the piece for your chart which confused me for a while:
"Worldwide Helium Production
Helium production by country in 2024, in billions of cubic meters."
The USGS source is using million, and the rest of the article pretty clearly implies million is the correct order of magnitude.
Thanks, this has been fixed.
Great piece—really clear explanation of why helium matters, the connection to natural gas, and the fragility of the supply chain.
One thing that stands out is that if we want more helium, lower prices, and less exposure to geopolitical chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, the most direct lever is increasing natural gas output.
It's worth noting that we already know where significant untapped gas resources exist. In the U.S. alone, there are vast proven reserves in places like Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, and portions of the Marcellus Shale that remain undeveloped due to permitting restrictions, environmental rules, and other legal barriers. Similar dynamics exist globally, where known gas fields are delayed or left undeveloped. Many of these resources likely contain helium as well.
Bringing new supply online has become increasingly difficult. In the U.S. and other Western countries, it can take a decade or more to get new projects approved—if they are approved at all—while in other parts of the world projects can move from decision to approval almost immediately, often at a fraction of the cost.
If supply constraints of helium and natural gas are driving shortages, price volatility, and security risks, then policy has to be part of the solution.
The permitting bottleneck is real, but there's a interesting wrinkle: the newest helium-specific plays like Pulsar Helium in Minnesota and Desert Mountain Energy in Arizona are drilling formations where helium concentrations run 5-10%, versus the ~0.3% you'd get as a natural gas byproduct. If those projects scale, they'd partially decouple helium supply from the natural gas policy debate entirely.
The capitalization implied by this transaction implies this is not consequential? Why can they buy the rights to a significant potential expansion for under $1M?
https://goldinvest.de/en/quantum-acquisition-pulsar-helium-expands-project-areas-in-minnesota-by-approximately-1000/
Thank you for sharing this; I wasn't familiar with those projects. And that’s a fair point—new primary-helium discoveries like Pulsar’s Minnesota project sound like they could be genuinely important. High-grade 5–10%+ helium reservoirs could diversify supply over time.
But they don’t eliminate the core issue: those projects still require additional drilling permits, infrastructure approvals, ongoing compliance hurdles that have to be overcome, etc. before they produce at scale.
So if permitting bottlenecks and other legal/regulatory barriers constrain resource development generally (adding significant time, cost, and uncertainty), they constrain helium-specific projects too. These discoveries may diversify helium supply—but the fundamental problem remains.
Ah, a slight revision to this: "Because helium is a byproduct of natural gas extraction, and because only some natural gas fields have helium in appreciable quantities, a small number of countries are responsible for the world’s supply of helium. The US and Qatar together produce around 2/3rds of the world’s helium supply. Russia, Algeria, Canada, China, and Poland produce most of the remaining balance."
The method of extraction from natural gas is distillation - cool the gas, take out the methane, the propane etc etc as they liquefy until the only atmosphere left is the helium. OK. The cost of that cooling is high, therefore you require a gas with high He content to make it worthwhile.
Ahh, but. Making LNG is doing the first part of that already. So, making LNG covers those first - and major - costs of having to cool down the vast bulk of the material. So, getting helium from an LNG train means that you can profitably extract from a much lower He concentration on the original gas.
LNG has hugely increased the recoverable He resources out there.
Also, this is why Qatar now produces He - from their LNG trains.
Thanks for writing this. Very timely. It reminds me that I need to write a piece on helium exploration, of which I have been involved in two projects so far — why it is harder to trap than natural gas, and why only a few fields have helium content.
Lovely piece. The Helium shock for MRIs is particularly bad for countries like India, where most machines are refurbished machines from the gas guzzling era. I wrote about it here: https://www.ranganaut.com/p/the-helium-shock-a-case-study-in
A major hit to medical tourism (going to India for your heart-lung operation)
> Each Goodyear Blimp, for instance, uses around 300,000 cubic feet of helium.
Surely they reuse it‽
Asking for a friend with a summer birthday, what about party balloons? 🎈😃
I did the math. Apparently party balloons are ~8% of world demand.
With 30% of supply offline, unfortunately party balloons (+ weather balloons and blimps) do not solve the problem. To Brian’s point, helium is hard to replace…
Ahem! You do not cool yourself by sweating. You cool yourself by turning water into steam in your lungs, and expelling said steam. You sweat because after you expelled water vapor, your salt balance went up and you have to expel the salt. This is why sweat is very salty.
It takes 1 "therm" to raise water by 1 degree celcius. It takes 80 therms to raise ice to water. It takes 540 (that's five hundred and forty!) "therms" to raise water to steam. Turning water into steam in your lungs is a very effective way of ripping heat out of your both.
This 540 marker works the other way also. This is why steam burns are so bad- the steam is hitting your skin and cooling to water.
The diagrams here express these numbers as time given a constant amount of heat input or heat extraction:
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_Chemistry/Fundamentals_of_General_Organic_and_Biological_Chemistry_(LibreTexts)/08%3A_Gases_Liquids_and_Solids/8.14%3A_Changes_of_State_Calculations
I haven't looked into it, but this seemed suspect and Wikipedia disagrees, as does Gemini: https://g.co/gemini/share/5e5b886ffe61
LLMs (without Deep Research) are not a source. What's the Wikipedia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspiration
> In humans, sweating is primarily a means of thermoregulation, which is achieved by the water-rich secretion of the eccrine glands. Maximum sweat rates of an adult can be up to 2–4 litres (0.5–1 US gal) per hour or 10–14 litres (2.5–3.5 US gal) per day, but is less in children prior to puberty.[3][4][5] Evaporation of sweat from the skin surface has a cooling effect due to evaporative cooling. Hence, in hot weather, or when the individual's muscles heat up due to exertion, more sweat is produced. Animals with few sweat glands, such as dogs, accomplish similar temperature regulation results by panting, which evaporates water from the moist lining of the oral cavity and pharynx.
BTW love the blog
Should we hope for a bump up in supply as a byproduct of fusion power?
Only if China chooses to export it.
Thank you for the very informative, timely article.
You wrote: "But modern MRI machines are “zero boil-off,” which essentially never need to be recharged with helium."
Since helium is used to cool superconducting magnets for both MRI machines and semiconductor production, is the “zero boil-off” technique used in the case of semiconductors, and if not, is there something making it not applicable in that context?
So the US has its own Rare Earth equivalent, especially in a Strait of Hormuz is down world (Qatar out)? Interesting
Lots of ways to trim use. Cut the balloons, Nitrogen works for leak detection and welding, and MRIs can be replaced with CAT scans (which give better info without the Helium)
So what percentage of helium usage is for party balloons?
Its in Lifting Gas, above.
I never asked myself where helium is actually coming from. I assumed more local manufacturing, but did not expect natural gas. Thanks for the article!
Curious if there are any other sources of helium and if there are industrial processes to make it and at what scales.
Anything that results in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_decay , or those five parts per million could be distilled from ordinary air. Shortage would have to get pretty severe - or fusion reactors would have to be commercially viable for other reasons - before serious exploitation of such sources would make economic sense.
There exist helium sources outside the Persian Gulf.
In the table showing the He component in natural gas from various wells is that a weight fraction or an atomic fraction? If it is a weight fraction that makes the atomic fraction huge.
We could eventually ramp up production of He from wells outside the Middle East, but it takes time to build the plants to do so.
I suspect that a hydrogen powered blimp could be successful. For one thing, hydrogen is four times lighter than helium so the lifting power would be much greater. This should be a longer discussion, but I’ve read that the tragic fire of the Hindenburg was from the cloth cover and wood frame, not the hydrogen. Hydrogen being so light if there is a leak it floats upward. It doesn’t drop down and pool as gasoline might.
Yeah, they changed the paint on the Hindenberg and there were internal engineering documents complaining about fire danger from the change.
Years ago I saw a sheet of hotel stationery from the Hindenberg in an antique shop in Las Vegas. I still wonder if it was legit or a fake.