alt Hacker NewsOh no! My Helium!!
C'mon... First, there's no infrastructure in the US to process the gas and purify to semi manufacturing levels. Second, as soon as the epstein war is done (either by Iran allowing navigation through Hormuz or the arab countries developing alternative routes), Helium orices will go back to be so low it doesn't make financial sense to purify unless you have the volumes they have. And by then, still no infrastructure would be ready for the task.
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> C'mon... First, there's no infrastructure in the US to process the gas and purify to semi manufacturing levels
Not true. As an example, Air Liquide tanks take semiconductor grade pure helium from Ladder Creek in Colorado to international semi labs:
https://electronics.airliquide.com/who-we-are/our-markets/se...
https://tumbleweedmidstream.com/
(I noticed now because Colorado has a weird Natural Gas bill on the docket)
The oil reserve is so that when there's a war in the Middle East you have some period of time before you run out and encounter price shocks.
The helium reserve is so that when there's a war in the Middle East...
The US has drawn down on the first one substantially and sold the second one to the private sector a decade ago that had no interest in maintaining it.