Oil isn’t the only casualty of the strait blockade: Helium is running out

While media attention initially focused on the spike in gas prices, the real ticking time bomb for the high-tech economy and scientific research is the loss of helium.

The global energy and technology landscape has been shaken in recent weeks by an unprecedented event: a series of coordinated attacks against Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar, the beating heart of global liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and, above all, the production of helium. The explosions, caused by drones and long-range missiles amid the escalating regional conflict, have knocked out the Helium 1, 2 and 3 plants, which account for roughly 30 to 35 percent of the global production of this noble gas.

While media attention initially focused on the spike in gas prices, the real ticking time bomb for the high-tech economy and scientific research is the loss of helium. With estimated damages that will take three to five years to repair, the world is facing the most severe helium shortage in modern history. Helium is more than just the gas that makes balloons float; it is a critical, non-renewable resource produced almost exclusively as a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Its physical properties – particularly having the lowest boiling point of any element (4.2 Kelvin, or -268.9 degrees Celsius) – make it the only coolant capable of maintaining superconducting magnets at the temperatures necessary for them to operate.

The immediate consequences will be felt across three key sectors.

Medicine: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines use massive quantities of liquid helium to cool their magnets. A prolonged shortage could make it impossible to install new machines and force the decommissioning of existing ones, dealing a devastating blow to global medical diagnostics.

Semiconductors and AI: Helium is essential in the manufacturing process for advanced chips, where it is used to create inert atmospheres and for rapid cooling. In the midst of the artificial intelligence boom, this production bottleneck risks choking the supply chain for GPUs and next-generation processors.

Digital infrastructure: The gas is used in the production of fiber optics and the cooling of high-capacity hard drives (helium-filled drives), which are essential for data centers.

The most high-profile impact on basic research will be felt at CERN in Geneva. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest cryogenic facility, containing roughly 120 tons of liquid helium to maintain its 1,600 superconducting magnets at a temperature of 1.9 Kelvin (colder than deep space).

Although CERN has extremely efficient recovery and recycling systems, routine losses during operations and maintenance periods require constant replenishment. With the helium market in a state of force majeure and prices potentially exceeding $70 per cubic meter, the operating budgets of CERN and other national laboratories (such as Fermilab near Chicago, or NMR spectroscopy labs at universities) will face unsustainable pressure.

Without helium, the LHC’s magnets would experience a quench (a loss of superconductivity), an event that can cause structural damage if not managed correctly. But even if conditions are kept safe, a lack of helium simply means the accelerator cannot operate. This could result in a “lost decade” for particle physics, right as upgrades for the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) were being planned.

The bombing of Ras Laffan has laid bare the fragility of a global supply chain that depends on just a few key nodes: the United States (whose strategic reserves are running low), Qatar, Russia and Algeria. With Russia under sanctions and Qatar out of the picture, the West finds itself with limited options. The absence of helium doesn’t just ground balloons; it grounds the future.

The outlook for the near future is bleak. Scientific research will need to accelerate the development of small-scale reliquefaction technologies and magnets that operate at higher temperatures (high-temperature superconductors), but these solutions will take years, if not decades, to implement on a large scale. In the meantime, the international scientific community is looking with apprehension toward the Persian Gulf, hoping that diplomacy can repair what drones have destroyed.

© Il Manifesto Global