There’s a Helium Shortage In The World
Your Purchasing Limit Of Balloons: 10
The worldwide helium demand is outpacing supply, and any interruption in production and delivery can throw the market off balance. Helium plants expected to be fully operating this year in Qatar and Algeria were delayed and, in some cases, shut down. In September of last year, Exxon Mobil Corp., one of the nation’s largest private producers of helium, shut down a plant in Wyoming for scheduled maintenance. Two months later, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management — which operates the Federal Helium Reserve near Amarillo, Texas, and provides crude helium to private refineries — did the same with its helium enrichment plant.
A Little Helium History: Helium, the most stable of all the elements, is used to cool the magnets used by MRI equipment and purge the space shuttle’s fuel tanks. Helium also is used in detecting gas leaks in other products and conducting state-of-the-art particle physics research. The gas even has a hand in the semiconductor and computer chip manufacturing process and plays a role in the guiding mechanisms of air-to-air missiles. The federal reserve has become a major world supplier, but that was not the government’s intention. When private demand outstripped the federal need, Congress passed the 1996 Helium Privatization Act, and the reserve was intended to supplement private sector production. The program, however, now supplies about 42% of the domestic demand for helium and 35% of the global demand. Picture Above: Balloon Man: A petrol station owner filled 105 balloons with helium, attached them to his favorite lawn chair, then sat back and drifted away.
