Sunday, November 25, 2007
The gas is a limited natural resource on Earth.
THE (RIVERSIDE, CALIF.) PRESS-ENTERPRISE
Customers don’t believe balloon-seller Darlene Jaycocks when she tells them she cannot accept last-minute birthday party orders because of a global helium shortage.
But Jaycocks counts herself lucky.
Shortfalls in world production and rising demand for the gas — which is used in welding, manufacturing microchips and in hospital MRI machines — have left other balloon suppliers without any helium at all.
Businesses that can get the helium are paying sky-high prices.
“There is just not enough helium to supply everywhere,” said Jaycocks, owner of Balloony Tunes Party Center in Cathedral City, Calif. “I don’t think people really understand. ... They just think it’s out there floating around.”
While abundant in the universe, the lighter-than-air gas is a limited natural resource on Earth, generally found trapped in natural-gas deposits underground. Helium extractors recover it from natural-gas fields that, in the United States, are mostly found in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
An array of industrial uses of helium, such as cooling MRI magnets or manufacturing semi-conductors, lasers and telecommunication cables are driving up global demand. Meanwhile, supply is stagnant, said Hans Stuart with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, one of the world’s largest suppliers of crude helium to private refineries.
“Demand for helium is ballooning,” said Stuart, chief of external affairs for the bureau’s New Mexico office. “A number of plants in the private sector are not up to full capacity. And there is also the issue of where do we get new helium. What is going to happen in the future?”
Mark Hinds owns Sparks Custom Shop in Pomona, Calif., with his son. They weld engine heads and cylinder blocks for race cars, and use about 300 cubic feet of helium a week to prevent the metal from warping.
The price Hinds pays for helium has jumped almost 60 percent in the past two years and customers complain, he said.
“The price just keeps going up,” he said. “It is hard to keep up.”
But for balloon sellers, who are at the bottom of the helium food chain, shortage means that the smallest interruption or glitch on the supply side can leave them without any helium at all, Stuart said.
Matt McKinney, past president of the International Balloon Association, is vice president of marketing for Santa Ana, Calif.-based All-American Balloon Supply, which wholesales helium to about 900 party stores and balloon artists.
While All-American is meeting its customers’ needs, other smaller helium suppliers face restrictions, he said. Some simply cannot make all their deliveries to party stores and other clients, he said.
Jaycocks now charges $1.25 for an 11-inch helium balloon, which sold at her store for 95 cents about a year ago.
Customers sometimes grumble, she said. Still, her main concern is that she could one day run out of helium altogether. She cannot get rush orders of the gas anymore, she said. A few times, her regular shipments came late and she had to turn people away.
She has stopped renting out her large helium tanks for events, and she encourages customers to consider alternatives to helium balloons, such as balloon sculpting.
She did this recently when she used air-filled balloons instead of the helium kind to create a spiral column for the grand opening of a housing development. She kept the creation standing tall by using a framework of plastic pipe, she said.
The Bureau of Land Management provides almost half of the nation’s helium supply and more than one-third of the world supply from a vast underground helium reservoir near Amarillo, Texas, Stuart said. This supply will run out sooner or later, and private suppliers have not emerged to take its place, he said.
The federal government created the reserve in 1925 to ensure a future helium supply for war blimps. It now has about 22 billion cubic feet of the gas, but has been selling roughly 2 billion cubic feet each year in the market, Stuart said.
Jaycocks said helium balloons can lift people’s spirits like nothing else, but balloon sellers will have to learn to conserve the gas.
“It is something we really have to think about with the whole world,” she said. “Gas and water and the environment, not just helium. We have to think about the things we have to conserve and find alternative solutions to get us through.”