The war in the Middle East has already upended global supply chains for petroleum and fertilizer — and now it’s helium’s turn.
Normally, about a third of the global supply of the gas comes from Qatar — and through the Strait of Hormuz. With that source cut off, a shortage is looming for industries that depend on helium. That would have consequences well beyond your next balloon purchase at Party City.
Nick Fitzkee orders about $6,000 of liquid helium every three months. He’s the director of the magnetic resonance facility at Mississippi State University, and he needs the helium because it’s extremely cold. As in, 450 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
“Helium is used, basically, to keep the superconducting coils at the temperature where they can be superconducting. And if they rise above that temperature, then your MRI no longer works,” Fitzkee said.
Semiconductor chip makers need helium too. And it’s produced as a byproduct.
“It’s usually associated with places where they can extract large amounts of natural gas,” Fitzkee said. And because only a few places do that, “that’s why we have this bottleneck right now.”
There’s a reason we’re only feeling the bottleneck now, about four weeks into the war.
“It takes about a month to get helium to its destination,” said Maura Garvey, who runs Intelligas Consulting. She said restarting production is going to be difficult, even if the Strait of Hormuz reopens today.
“It’s going to take them a few months to get everything back up to speed. That’s not going to happen until sometime between June and August,” Garvey said.
Garvey said the helium in storage can hold us over until then.
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