As helium supply continues to tighten in the US, key businesses that rely on a consistent supply in the country, including semiconductor manufacturers and operators of magnetic resonance image (MRI) machines, are beginning to feel an impact.
The Compressed Gas Association (CGA) on Thursday (Feb 24) highlighted the struggle for these markets as a result of outages at the US Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) crude helium enrichment unit, along other contributing factors.
As gasworld heard from Phil Kornbluth, President of Kornbluth Helium Consulting, earlier this month, new information about the explosion and fire that took place at Gazprom’s Amur natural gas processing facility on 5th January indicates that helium production will remain offline for at least the next six months, further adding to industry strain.
Read more: Kornbluth: Latest Amur fire tightens helium supply for 2022
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