Lift off for global helium market15 Feb 2024 01:18
If I say helium, you say “balloons” — yet party balloons make up less than 10% of helium’s use across rocket launches, semiconductors and medical equipment.
The scale and importance of the global helium market is often overlooked.
The estimated value of Grade-A helium (99.997% helium or greater) sold during 2022 in the US by private industry was US$820 million.
Helium is not publicly traded, with agreements negotiated privately between buyers and sellers, so pricing is often difficult to establish.
But it is clear that demand is growing and supply is extremely volatile.
One of the industry’s leading consulting firms, Akap Energy, values the global helium production market to be worth US$1.5billion on a price assumption of US$250 thousand cubic feet (mcf) — but, end user pricing could have been up to x4 times higher in 2022.
And this is not due to a one-off supply chain problem: we are currently in the fourth helium supply shortage since 2006, with prices doubling since January 2002.