Strait of Hormuz closure deflates global helium supply

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Strait of Hormuz closure deflates global helium supply

The blockade in the Strait of Hormuz is affecting not only oil, but the global helium supply.

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

The blockade in the Strait of Hormuz is not just blocking oil shipments. NPR's Lilly Quiroz reports it's also disrupting the flow of about one-third of the world's supply of helium.

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LILLY QUIROZ, BYLINE: Yep. Helium is used for balloons, but it's also used in a lot of other things. The Artemis II moon mission that blasted off Wednesday?

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DERROL NAIL: And liftoff.

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QUIROZ: That rocket required helium to help propel it into space. Semiconductor makers also use it, so it affects computers, smartphones and AI. And you know what else?

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QUIROZ: Helium is used in MRI machines.

M MAHESH: They use quite a large amount of helium to cool the coils to make - a magnetic field is created at the center of the tunnel. That's where the patient goes in and out.

QUIROZ: That's Dr. M. Mahesh, a professor of radiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He says MRI scanners use approximately 2,000 liters of liquid helium.

MAHESH: But it remains quite constant for a long time. Every year, they tap it off a little bit when it is lost by heating.

QUIROZ: Dr. Mahesh says it's too early to know if what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz is affecting medical science yet. Now, helium is a gas at room temperature, but it's transported in liquid form. It needs to stay cold - like, negative-400-degrees-Fahrenheit cold. This is a problem for the containers holding liquid helium that have been sitting for weeks in the Strait of Hormuz. Around the six-week mark, the product will evaporate. South Korea and Taiwan are feeling the shortage the most. They're the biggest consumers of helium from Qatar, a major producer that is no longer shipping or making it. And while the U.S. is the world's largest exporter of helium...

BRAD BORGGARD: You can't make up for the fact that a third of world supply has been offline for a month.

QUIROZ: That's Brad Borggard, the chief financial officer for North American Helium, a small producer in Canada. He says this helium shortage isn't the first. It's actually the fifth in the past 20 years.

BORGGARD: A lot of the supply is in geopolitically - I'll call them - challenged areas like the Middle East, like Russia. And so that combination has been a big part of the reason why we've had all these shortages over the last couple of decades.

QUIROZ: He says his company is seeing an increase in consumers inquiring about their helium.

BORGGARD: What it really highlights is this need for diversification of supply sources for helium.

QUIROZ: In 2024, the global helium market was estimated to be worth $4.1 billion. That's according to the consulting company Grand View Research. And the growing demand for semiconductors is expected to increase the market value to over $6 billion by 2030. But semiconductor makers, like GlobalFoundries, don't appear to be immediately concerned. In a statement, they said they don't anticipate any near-term impacts but that the situation remains fluid. Scotten W. Jones, the president of Semiconductor Manufacturing Economics, says he's concerned about the shortage. But even if this leads to a price bump, he doesn't believe it will be put onto consumers.

SCOTTEN W JONES: You know, if helium doubled in price, quadrupled in price, it wouldn't impact semiconductors a whole lot. You know, if it went up 10x or 100x, then it would start to be a big problem.

QUIROZ: A kind of inflation that no consumer wants to see.

Lilly Quiroz, NPR News.

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