Regina, Consul – In the very southwest corner of the province, Savanna Drilling Rig 629 was drilling for a natural gas, but not the one you might think.

When people think of helium they often think of party balloons. But the party favourites make up just a fraction of the global $2-billion helium industry. The inert gas is the only safe way to pressurize liquid fuel in rockets and keep silicon chips cool while making semiconductors.

The global helium business has seldom been far from the headlines in the last half-decade. The industry endured a long and severe supply shortage from 2011-2013 (Helium Shortage 2.0) and though it has been through periods of recovery and equilibrium in the years since, the business is still often on the edge of imbalance.

The ongoing political crisis involving Qatar has highlighted the fragility of the global helium supply, of which the Gulf state is a major producer. In this exclusive news analysis piece, Richard Clarke looks at the geopolitical and economic vulnerabilities of the helium supply chain and explains how technological advances could make these problems a thing of the past.