cannot make up for the helium shortfall simply by producing helium at other natural gas wells because not every well contains helium. The National Helium Reserve once stored decades’ worth of helium, but today it only has enough to match roughly one year of domestic demand, or a third of a year of global demand.Ĭanada and the U.S. government and various private companies can inject or withdraw purified (or “enriched”) helium at meters along the pipeline. Kornbluth likens the National Helium Reserve to an ATM for helium, in which the U.S. This also cut off access to the U.S.’s National Helium Reserve, an almost 700 km-long underground pipeline that runs northeast from Amarillo through Oklahoma to Bushton, Kan.

The Cliffside facility was shut down approval to restart it only came at the end of May. “It was really fortunate that it wasn’t an explosion.” “If someone had lit a match, the facility wouldn’t be here anymore,” says Rich Gottwald, the president of the Compressed Gas Association, a trade association for industrial gases, including helium. But in January, there was a natural gas leak at one of the largest helium plants in the U.S., the Cliffside Crude Helium Enrichment Unit near Amarillo, Tex. Helium is most commonly found as a component of natural gas, from which it is crudely separated at natural gas processing plants before being purified at helium plants. Hospitals have been the largest end users of helium in the U.S., making up roughly 20 per cent of the market, says Phil Kornbluth, director of Kornbluth Helium Consulting in Bridgewater, N.J. Helium may be most familiar through its use in party balloons, but that is only a minor commercial application. But as helium becomes increasingly hard to obtain, with once-plentiful sources in the United States drying up and the world’s most promising new source located behind an international embargo, more and more hospitals are turning to models that use less of the widely known but little understood gas. “We’ve heard nothing to the contrary and we feel very optimistic moving forward.Most magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines require large amounts of helium to produce their diagnostic images. “We feel like we’ll be in a good situation with them in terms of them continuing to fill our tanks,” he said. “A certain load may have been coming in from Pennsylvania or next week’s load was coming in from Illinois and as long as we brought them our tanks for filling, they would fill them and we would bring them back,” he said.Ĭappel said he’s glad to have everything back to normal for him and is hopeful that it’ll stay that way for a while. After months of research, Cappel finally connected with a different of supplier who could help. “They were attaching them to sticks so they would look like they were floating, anything to give the look of helium,” he said. They started filling the balloons with air. Left with few options, the Cappels came up with an alternative. “The helium shortage was brought up at the trade shows from people all across the nation and a lot of stores like ours, bigger and smaller operations were still having issues with getting helium,” he said. He quickly realized he wasn’t the only business with this problem. Not only was there a shortage, but Cappel said the price nearly tripled. “Our suppliers were saying we can't fill your tanks anymore,” he said. But selling them became a bit of a problem a year ago when they faced a helium shortage. Owner Ray Cappel said balloons are one of the most popular items they sell. “We specialize in hard-to-find items and what we do, we do year round,” said Cappel. In November they found a different kind of supplier and have had helium since.So the business pivoted and started filling balloons with air.Last year their supply ran out of the gas.Cappel's, a costume and party supply store, was hit by the helium shortage.

Helium shortage