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Deep Thought · 08-31-2011, 11:58 AM,

The buzz on the street is that the gas companies are not selling helium, at least until Exon allocates more? Good thing the season is winding down...

Ron

arcFlash · 08-31-2011, 12:53 PM,

I don't see any buzz in the gas industry so if it's true, it's a lesson learned from big oil that if you say there is a shortage you 'move' the supply curve without really changing supply. So prices go up and you still sell the same quantity because supply didn't really shift! It's "money for nothing" and corporations are handing out paychecks.

The real story could be about how to decouple prices from supply and pull more profits from an inelastic product.

Anderson · 09-09-2011, 07:30 AM,

I received a letter from Airgas stateing that for the next 3 months we would be on an allocation of 70% of the He that was purchased in the last 12 months. The US Bureau of Land Management has put a limit on the amount of crude He withdrawls from the Cliffside storage field in May 2011. Also Mobil-Exon is doing a maintenance shutdown in Wyoming for the month of August thus taking the largest producer He off of production.

arcFlash · 09-09-2011, 09:51 AM,

That all checks out but I'm still skeptical. The power shortage in California looked real enough at the time until Enron cracked. With all the other stories of corruption I'm less believing. It still feels like a way to raise price and offset the federal sell off as they get out of the business of managing Helium.

aknelsonone · (This post was last modified: 09-09-2011, 08:45 PM by aknelsonone.)

This is a well known reality, for years. He is getting a gas with inadequate supply. For me it does not come as a surprise. In part too many industrial users are wasting the non replaceable resource. It seems a price hike has a good side too. Large users are going to look for the second best option. He was just too cheap and too convenient for many users.
For the divers it means to move to RB. I think the deep diving expeditions on OC will be soon a thing of the past.

Andreas

DetectorGuy · 09-12-2011, 08:53 PM,

Looking back at a post from 2009, I came across this thing I posted about using Neon as a replacement for Helium.

"Another thing I learned is that the USA is the main commercial supplier of helium. Some say that helium sources will be depleted within this century. What will shore up the helium needs then you say? Possibly Neon. Neon is a rare gas on earth accounting for less than .002% of the atmosphere. Although it can be extracted from air using a freezing process to create "helioneon" (25%He, 75%Ne). It is thought to be the fourth most abundant element in the universe. Now it the space shuttle could just bring back a cargo bay load every trip back we would be set"

Now that the space shuttle won't be flying around anymore bringing back Helium, somebody should start finding a substitute. Maybe work it into another process of extracting Neon from the air we breath as a by-product of an entirely different products manufacturing process...

arcFlash · 09-13-2011, 10:38 AM,

If we ever crack the Hydrogen fusion puzzle, that produces He but would never produce the volume we need.

aknelsonone: You say it better but part of what you said is what I was implying, only I don't think the market economy is pure enough to produce a real free price system. The price has been too low so things 'happen' and the price goes up. Obviously good in the long term but the shift now, I feel is the private sector taking advantage of buyers to over adjust the price and reset the expectations to a market price higher then what a free price system would otherwise produce. Why now? Because the US is getting out and leaving it up to private industry to set the price. It happened with the price of gas (at the pump). Gas and oil should be price coupled but they are not (no surprise Exon is listed in both cases). Same thing with 30 mortgage. They use to be coupled with the 10 year but that broke when the mortgage industry wanted more control. The fed set interest to near zero and that had little to no effect, that should not be possible.

I'm sure I'm way off but it plays out well and the producers have a lot of oil speculation profits and it's not to far to guess they learned how easy it is and want it from their remaining products.