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The United States and Iran may no longer be in active conflict, having established and then extended a cease-fire in their weekslong war, but the list of economic disruptions and industrial shortages continues to grow\u2014oil<\/a>, natural gas<\/a>, jet fuel<\/a>, tungsten<\/a>, sulfur<\/a>, fertilizer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Adding to that list is an often overlooked, but no less important, industrial input: helium.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n The United States and Iran may no longer be in active conflict, having established and then extended a cease-fire in their weekslong war, but the list of economic disruptions and industrial shortages continues to grow\u2014oil<\/a>, natural gas<\/a>, jet fuel<\/a>, tungsten<\/a>, sulfur<\/a>, fertilizer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Adding to that list is an often overlooked, but no less important, industrial input: helium.<\/p>\n You may know helium as the gas that keeps party balloons afloat and pumps voices to new heights<\/a>, but the gas has farther-reaching impacts than that. Colorless and lighter than air, helium is also a vital ingredient in many of the world\u2019s most powerful technologies, underpinning semiconductors, medical equipment, and more.<\/p>\n If \u201cyou think about semiconductors, fiber optics, or anything using superconducting magnets, the consequences of not having helium are gigantic in an economic sense,\u201d said Nicholas Snyder, the CEO of North American Helium, which currently produces<\/a> more than 7 percent of the helium supply in North America. \u201cIf you think about medical applications like MRI, there [are] huge consequences there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Weeks of war in the Middle East and attacks on energy infrastructure have dealt a painful shock to the global trade of helium, which is primarily extracted as a byproduct of natural gas production<\/a>. As the world\u2019s second-biggest<\/a> producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Qatar in particular is a major helium hub, accounting for about one-third<\/a> of global helium supply before the war erupted.<\/p>\n That changed after Iran attacked Qatar\u2019s Ras Laffan facility\u2014the biggest LNG plant<\/a> in the world\u2014prompting the state-owned QatarEnergy to halt production, declare force majeure<\/em>, and slash its annual helium exports by 14 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n Exports are also having trouble leaving the region: Most of Qatar\u2019s helium exports normally transit<\/a> the Strait of Hormuz, the vital maritime chokepoint that has been effectively strangled by the war.<\/p>\n The turmoil has already spiked helium prices<\/a>, with spot prices reportedly doubling last month. But since the commodity is mostly traded through long-term contracts<\/a>\u2014and the global transportation<\/a> of helium containers entails a longer lag time\u2014more pain could be on the horizon.<\/p>\n This is a \u201cbelated wake-up call in the helium world,\u201d said Snyder, particularly for places such as South Korea and Taiwan, he said, which were getting the majority of their helium from one source in the Middle East.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For a commodity so vital<\/span> to key technologies, helium has unique physical properties<\/a> that can make it challenging<\/a> for governments to stockpile or store it over lengthy periods of time. It can only be shipped internationally as a liquid at 4 degrees Kelvin, said Snyder, who described the gas as a \u201cperishable\u201d commodity. \u201cThere\u2019s not deliverable storage around the world that can easily fix this problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The United States is a major helium powerhouse. In fact, it\u2019s the world\u2019s largest producer of helium, accounting for 43 percent of global production in 2025, according to data<\/a> from the U.S. Geological Survey.<\/p>\n The U.S. government recognized the importance of helium to industrial and defense applications as far back as 1925, when it passed the Helium Act<\/a> to govern production of the gas and establish a federal strategic helium reserve near Amarillo, Texas. That was then expanded<\/a> during the Cold War in 1960, given helium\u2019s use in missiles and rockets. But that posture changed in 1996, when the government ordered the privatization of the strategic reserve.<\/p>\n Congress\u2019s reasoning at the time was that having a large government-owned helium stockpile in the United States was expensive and keeping prices of the gas \u201cabnormally low,\u201d according to Patrick Wilson, the founding principal of the Semiconductor & Innovation Group, a consulting firm in Washington. Wilson previously served as a Commerce Department official during the first Trump administration and earlier as an executive at the Semiconductor Industry Association, where he worked on the 2013 Helium Stewardship Act<\/a> that slowed the privatization<\/a> of the helium stockpile amid fears of a supply crunch. That legislation\u2019s 2021 deadline to sell the stockpile was further extended during the COVID-19 pandemic before being finalized<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cAll these tanks are super expensive to maintain \u2026 so it was a big storm of governments getting out of the business,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cNow, the government basically has no strategic reserve anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, with the threat looming of a supply crisis that the erstwhile strategic reserve was designed to prevent, some are calling for the reserve to be brought back. \u201cWhat remains is a private system serving commercial needs, not a public instrument designed to insure against severe national or global disruption,\u201d Robert Z. Lawrence of the Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote<\/a> this week. Helium \u201cis not just another commodity,\u201d he added. \u201cThe social costs of failure to hold adequate inventories are far greater than the private costs.\u201d<\/p>\n Similar demands are also being made on the other side of the world, with the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association calling on<\/a> the Taiwanese government this month to \u201cincrease strategic reserves of helium and natural gas.\u201d<\/p>\n Semiconductor chips have become the lifeblood of the global economy over the past decade, powering much of the technology that underpins our daily lives as well as advanced applications including missiles, artificial intelligence models, data centers, and quantum computing.<\/p>\n And none of it works without helium. The gas is a key material<\/a> in multiple steps of the chipmaking process<\/a>, from cooling the magnets used to keep the silicon wafers stable so that the electronic patterns that make them tick can be etched onto them to being used to pump out potential contaminants from the chipmaking environment. Chipmakers \u201cnot only need a lot of it, but they need it all the time,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
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