![]() Helium is often found serendipitously when drilling for oil or natural gas. ‘Nobody’s ever really looked for helium before,’ he says. This led to helium prices falling as competition was forced from the market.Īlthough a further bill was passed in 2013 to extend the reserve’s operation, and with countries like Qatar and Russia investing in helium production, Ballentine explains that supplies of the gas are still thin on the ground. Accounting for 30% of global supply, the reserve was set to be shut down after a 1996 congress bill was passed to sell off a large part of the supply and pay off the plant’s debts. This scarcity is partly driven by the US’s only helium reserve in Texas. Once in the atmosphere … is light enough that it escapes into space.’īallentine explains our helium reserves, at the current consumption rate, may only last until around 2030. ‘Once you use it, it’s released into the atmosphere. ‘Helium is one of these very limited resources that once you’ve used it, you can never recycle it,’ says Chris Ballentine from the University of Oxford, UK. Global demand is around 30,000 tonnes of helium per year and is used in a whole host of applications from MRI scanners and welding technologies to leak detection in gas pipelines and, yes, party balloons. The discovery marks the first time scientists have successfully prospected for the vital resource. Scientists in the UK are about to pump up the world’s shrinking helium reserves after unearthing a vast helium gas field in Tanzania.
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