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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lats podcast.

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Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal and.

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Speaker 3: I'm Tracy Alloway.

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Speaker 2: Tracy, one of the things that have been learning over

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Speaker 2: the last few weeks is that a lot more than

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Speaker 2: oil comes through No for real, Like you know, some

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Speaker 2: onegether's war breaking out in the Middle East. You just

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Speaker 2: think about oil, right, and then that's probably actually where

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Speaker 2: my mind would typically stop. What's the price of oil?

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Speaker 2: And we all are watching the price of oil, but

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Speaker 2: there are a lot of other things that are sourced

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Speaker 2: from the region that are of critical important I'm not

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Speaker 2: joking like I'm just saying.

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Speaker 3: Like I'm laughing, because we have one of those things

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Speaker 3: floating between us. So, speaking of stuff that comes out

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Speaker 3: of the Gulf region, here's one of those things.

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Speaker 2: Not listeners can't see it.

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Speaker 3: Not the aluminum itself, although probably aluminum also comes out

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Speaker 3: of the Gulf, but helium.

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Speaker 2: Tracy's holding a helium balloon. She went out and got

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Speaker 2: a prop.

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Speaker 3: I didn't one of our lovely producers did. I have

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Speaker 3: to say, I haven't held a balloon for a long time,

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Speaker 3: and it's surprisingly entertaining.

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Speaker 2: So okay, while you hold on to it, I'll go

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Speaker 2: a little bit further, which is I feel bad for

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Speaker 2: the people in helium because my understanding is that the

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Speaker 2: helium has some pretty important industrial properties. There's not a

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Speaker 2: lot of substitutes for it. But someone says helium, and like, oh,

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Speaker 2: the clowns are going to be able to make their

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Speaker 2: funny voices, et cetera.

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Speaker 3: Any chance we have to actually bring one of the

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Speaker 3: commodities that we talk about on the show into the studio,

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Speaker 3: I'm gonna seeze. So fear is some helium.

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Speaker 2: Well, look, the fact that the balloon is floating is

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Speaker 2: an indicator of the fact that it must have some

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Speaker 2: interesting properties as an element that perhaps have other applications.

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Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean it tells you something about

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Speaker 2: it as an elementary.

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Speaker 3: Well, it's funny you mentioned that, because initially I was

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Speaker 3: gonna take this balloon and you know, do the thing

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Speaker 3: breathe than the helium and have the funny voice. Well,

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Speaker 3: I thought for an audio medium, maybe it would work.

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Speaker 3: But then in the course of researching on helium, I

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Speaker 3: read about apparently it comes partially from radioactive decay, and

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Speaker 3: so I thought, well, maybe maybe I don't want to

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Speaker 3: be breathing in the helium, although I also read that

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Speaker 3: it's non toxic, so I don't know. We need to

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Speaker 3: talk about what helium actually is. Clearly, that's right.

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Speaker 2: And we've been getting requests for a Helium episode ever

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Speaker 2: since there was a headline out today Cutter some Helium

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Speaker 2: production that is not gonna sit one of those force

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Speaker 2: measures or something like that, I don't know whatever or

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Speaker 2: something not coming out. Anyway, there's been a lot of

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Speaker 2: requests for a Helium episode. We've never done one. Incidentally,

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Speaker 2: years ago, I used to lift weights with this guy

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Speaker 2: in the East Village who's like sort of an entrepreneur

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Speaker 2: and Helium filled with no but he was in Helium

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Speaker 2: among all those things. He's one of these guys that

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Speaker 2: has his like finger hands and everything, and he also

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Speaker 2: had like a Helium venture and he's like, oh, you

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Speaker 2: got to talk to my friend one day. You guys

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Speaker 2: should do an episode on Helium. And then I got

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Speaker 2: connected with our guests who are about to introduce a

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Speaker 2: second and I said, hey, do you know this guy

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Speaker 2: in the East Village Because okay, maybe like not everyone

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Speaker 2: in Canada knows each other, but everyone in the helium industry.

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Speaker 2: I must certainly knows each other. He's like, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 2: of course I know that guy who used to live

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Speaker 2: away to it.

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Speaker 3: It does seem to be a small there's a traded industry,

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Speaker 3: which is why we're talking about it today, which is.

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Speaker 2: Why we're talking about today anyway. What is helium? Why

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Speaker 2: is it important? Where do we get it? Why is

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Speaker 2: it impaired right now? Many questions that people at answered

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Speaker 2: very excited to say. We do have the perfect guest.

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Speaker 2: We're going to be speaking with Nick Snyder, founder and

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Speaker 2: CEO of North American Helium, which minds and sells helium

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Speaker 2: out of Canada. So Nick, thank you so much for

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Speaker 2: coming on odd lots.

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Speaker 4: Joe Tracy thanks for having me.

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Speaker 2: How annoyed argues that like that we brought up balloon,

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Speaker 2: they just like, oh, I have the helium company, and

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Speaker 2: like everyone, ninety nine percent of the time, people are

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Speaker 2: just gonna think that's like the thing for balloons, and

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Speaker 2: therefore it can't be that important.

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Speaker 4: You know, I've gotten used to it. I've got young

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Speaker 4: kids and they had to exercise school asking them what

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Speaker 4: their parents did, and they said that I blow up balloons.

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Speaker 4: So the teachers definitely think I'm a clown and we

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Speaker 4: all get used to it.

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Speaker 3: Okay, well, why don't we ask in all seriousness what

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Speaker 3: are the industrial applications for helium beyond entertaining us in

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Speaker 3: balloon form?

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Speaker 4: So the biggest demand source, which you've probably seen in

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Speaker 4: the news a little bit because of the events in Iran,

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Speaker 4: is manufacturing semiconductors, and beyond that, one of the fastest

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Speaker 4: growing end uses is for launching rockets for space exploration.

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Speaker 4: And then there's a number of pretty durable, long standing

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Speaker 4: uses including leak detection for everything from every cell and

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Speaker 4: an electric battery to all sorts of complex machinery manufacturing,

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Speaker 4: fiber optics, titanium MRIs and NMR for drug discovery. It's

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Speaker 4: pretty well used across all of technology, all right.

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Speaker 2: So what is it about the element helium that gives

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Speaker 2: it these properties such that it is useful? Well, you

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Speaker 2: described as a fairly wide range of industrial applications.

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Speaker 4: So what makes it so useful is it's got three

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Speaker 4: or four things going for it that are completely unique.

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Speaker 4: One is that it has the lowest boiling point of

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Speaker 4: anything in nature. So liquid helium is about four degrees kelvin.

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Speaker 4: I don't have my uh, you know, conversion in front

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Speaker 4: of me. I think that's negative two hundred and seventy

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Speaker 4: something degrees celsius. So it's the coldest substance on Earth,

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Speaker 4: and that's really important for any sort of superconducting magnets

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Speaker 4: to the most.

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Speaker 2: Google says that's negative four hundred and fifty two degrees fahrenheit.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, that's quite cold.

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Speaker 4: We're Canadian companyelium.

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Speaker 2: Kelvin is our common language. We don't have to fight

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Speaker 2: fahrenheit versus celsia's here. We're gonna class pans with kelvin anyway,

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Speaker 2: keep going.

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Speaker 4: So just the boiling point alone makes it very unique

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Speaker 4: and important. So if you want to have something very cold,

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Speaker 4: and that's primarily low temperature physics and superconductors, you need

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Speaker 4: to use liquid helium for that. But the boiling point

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Speaker 4: is also important for launching rockets because if you're launching rockets,

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Speaker 4: you can't pump the liquid rocket fuel into the engine

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Speaker 4: fast enough because the volume is so large, so you

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Speaker 4: need to pressurize those rockets, and that is primarily done

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Speaker 4: with helium because it is light weight. But also it's

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Speaker 4: the only substance that is non reactive that remains a

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Speaker 4: gas at the temperature of liquid oxygen or liquid kerosene.

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Speaker 4: So it also, in addition to being a very cold substance,

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Speaker 4: is a liquid. It's also it's a great heat transfer medium.

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Speaker 4: So if you think about the fiberglass insulation in your

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Speaker 4: walls is a good insulator, and the copper pot you

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Speaker 4: cook eggs in is a good heat transfer medium. No

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Speaker 4: one really thinks about that with gases, but helium is

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Speaker 4: very good at transferring heat. So if you were a

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Speaker 4: deep sea diver that they breathe the helium oxygen mix

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Speaker 4: mixture so that they don't get nitrogen narcosis when they're

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Speaker 4: in that high helium atmosphere, they have to heat their

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Speaker 4: habitat to about ninety eight degrees or they'll start shivering.

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Speaker 4: Because nitrogen is a very good insulator and helium is

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Speaker 4: a very good conductor of heat, and that becomes important

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Speaker 4: in semiconductor manufacturing because as they're doing the lithography process,

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Speaker 4: they need a carrier gas that is a small molecule,

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Speaker 4: and helium is the smallest molecule in nature. That's also

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Speaker 4: something that can transfer heat away to avoid errors, and

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Speaker 4: also is non reactive. So really what makes helium demand

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Speaker 4: so durable in some of these applications, is that you're

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Speaker 4: using more than one of the unique attributes of the molecule.

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Speaker 3: Wait, just to be clear on semiconductor lithography, the actual etching,

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Speaker 3: how is the helium used in that process? Is it

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Speaker 3: just like in the environment around to keep it cool,

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Speaker 3: or like, how is it being deployed.

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Speaker 5: So I'm not an expert here, I don't want to

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Speaker 5: get out of my depth, but basically, you know, they

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Speaker 5: have a light source and a mask and then they

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Speaker 5: have to deposit something on there that.

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Speaker 4: Is vapor deposition. They need to carry your gas for

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Speaker 4: whatever they're depositing on there, and they need that to

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Speaker 4: be you know, something with a very high heat transfer

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Speaker 4: rate and also a small molecule. They use it in

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Speaker 4: a bunch of other parts of the semiconductor process, but

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Speaker 4: a lot of them like cooling the backside of the

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Speaker 4: wafer you can recycle. It's the lithography process where they're

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Speaker 4: essentially polluting the helium with other volatile compounds. That's what's

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Speaker 4: causing demand to grow so quickly in semiconductors. And I've

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Speaker 4: seen estimates that the new leading edge chips use ten

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Speaker 4: times more helium per ship than older technologies, So the

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Speaker 4: helium demand from that sector is growing. It roughly double

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Speaker 4: the volume of silicon from that sector is growing.

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Speaker 3: Okay, and I feel very after school special asking this

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Speaker 3: next question while next to a balloon. But where does

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Speaker 3: helium actually come from?

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Speaker 4: Helium is only created on Earth by, as you said,

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Speaker 4: radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. Helium itself is not radioactive,

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Speaker 4: and divers can breathe it as long as there's oxygen

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Speaker 4: in there as well. What's interesting about helium is that,

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Speaker 4: unlike any other critical mineral, once you use it, it

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Speaker 4: leaves the atmosphere, so you can't go get it out

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Speaker 4: of a landfill after the fact. So that means that

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Speaker 4: you can only find helium on Earth underground where it's

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Speaker 4: been trapped. And the generation time scales are roughly in

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Speaker 4: order of magnetudes larger than for oil and gas. So

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Speaker 4: an oil and gas deposit might have taken ten million

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Speaker 4: years to be created. In helium, you're talking about hundreds

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Speaker 4: of millions of years because it's a very slow process.

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Speaker 2: So we're going to get to North American helium and

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Speaker 2: the deposits that you have access to. But there's helium deposits,

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Speaker 2: and then helium also e merges as a byproduct of

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Speaker 2: natural gas. So talk to us about how helium comes

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Speaker 2: out of the grown Typically, you know, we're talking about

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Speaker 2: the Middle East, somewhere Tatar there's a lot of gas

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Speaker 2: versus say, where you're mining healing, and then we'll get

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Speaker 2: into some of these different processes.

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Speaker 4: So that's really primarily a function of exploration. Okay, helium

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Speaker 4: is much more rare than natural gas, but most of

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Speaker 4: the world's helium supply comes as a byproduct of natural

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Speaker 4: gas because there's been a huge amount of exploration drilling

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Speaker 4: for natural gas, so that's where they've found it. And

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Speaker 4: there's one gigantic field in the US Mid Continent called

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Speaker 4: the Hugoton that's been on production for one hundred years.

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Speaker 4: That's what we use to originally fill the Federal Helium Reserve.

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Speaker 4: The field and cutter which they share with Iran. Although

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Speaker 4: Iran is not able to extract helium that has one

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Speaker 4: twentieth of one percent helium in it, so it's a

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Speaker 4: very very small quantity. But because they're doing so much

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Speaker 4: pre treatment, because there's hydrogen sulfide in the gas, and

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Speaker 4: because the scale of their LNG facility is so large.

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Speaker 4: That's the largest single source of helium in the world.

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Speaker 2: This is really helpful because I just sort of, you know,

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Speaker 2: when we do these things like where's that fane come from,

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Speaker 2: it's like all these byproducts. So I assumed that helium

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Speaker 2: was yet just like another byproduct thing that shows up

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Speaker 2: anytime you're looking for natural gas. But it sounds like, no,

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Speaker 2: the reason it's there is just because there's been a

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Speaker 2: lot of exploration in that area and they found helium.

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Speaker 2: But that it's not inevitable that anywhere you have natural gas,

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Speaker 2: I're going to find helium.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yea.

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Speaker 3: So actually, on that note, so if I go exploring

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Speaker 3: for nat gas and I happen to find a helium deposit, like,

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Speaker 3: what happens to that helium if I decide that I

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Speaker 3: want to monetize it, Like, how do I actually extract

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Speaker 3: it out of the ground? How do I store it?

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Speaker 3: Do I set up a helium facility right next to

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Speaker 3: where the deposit actually is, or do I move it

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Speaker 3: somewhere else? What's the next step in the process.

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Speaker 4: The way that the gas separation process works is for

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Speaker 4: the most part, you're actually separating everything except for the

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Speaker 4: helium because helium is a small, non reactive molecule, you

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Speaker 4: can't just take that out. So for the most part,

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Speaker 4: helium always shows up with nitrogen, so you'd already have

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Speaker 4: a high nitrogen content in the gas, and then you're

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Speaker 4: going to remove the nitrogen and the methane and be

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Speaker 4: left with the helium, which you can then purify. And

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Speaker 4: there's really only a couple of fields in the world.

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Speaker 4: There's one field in Algeria that's been on production for

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Speaker 4: a long time and it's falling off. There's one field

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Speaker 4: in Siberia. There's the field in the Middle East, the

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Speaker 4: field that's been depleting for a long time in the

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Speaker 4: US Mid Continent. But it is really quite rare. And

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Speaker 4: if you think about what are the ingredients you need

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Speaker 4: for this, you need to have an area with uranium

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Speaker 4: and thorium, and we sort of know where that is

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Speaker 4: because the US and the Russians during the Cold War

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Speaker 4: looked all over the world for uranium. And you need

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Speaker 4: to have an area where you've got a sedimentary basin,

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Speaker 4: where you're going to have traditional oil reservoir rocks. You're

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Speaker 4: sort of looking for a sandstone, and in general, you're

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Speaker 4: looking for an area where there aren't any mountains because

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Speaker 4: it's a small molecule that wants to escape to the surface.

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Speaker 4: So if you are in a tectonic area, that's going

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Speaker 4: to be a big problem for you.

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Speaker 2: That's interesting. So the existence of mountains implies I hadn't

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Speaker 2: thought about that at all. I would say, oh, mountains,

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Speaker 2: that's great. Is probably more deeply buried, less place for

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Speaker 2: it to escape. But the existence of mountains implies tectonic activity,

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Speaker 2: and that's how you get leaked. Super interesting. Do they

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Speaker 2: have it in Kazakhson? I know they have a lot

264
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Speaker 2: of uranium. There is there helium in kazakhs On.

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Speaker 4: I think there's a little bit of helium content in

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Speaker 4: one of the stranded gas fields there. Certainly there's no

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Speaker 4: production there, Okay, And again you know the the LNG

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Speaker 4: operation and cutter is somewhat unique with a very small

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Speaker 4: helium content. If you were to go drill for helium

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Speaker 4: in North America and you're not going to have one

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Speaker 4: of the world's largest energy complexes there, generally one third

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Speaker 4: of one percent is sort of considered an economic cutoff

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Speaker 4: for the helium downtown.

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Speaker 3: Is it true? We used to have a strategic a

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Speaker 3: national helium reserve. I can't believe we don't have a

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Speaker 3: strategic pork reserve, but there was a federal helium reserve once.

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Speaker 4: Upon a time when our government was very foresighted. We

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Speaker 4: did build a helium reserve during the Cold War, which

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Speaker 4: was a brilliant idea, both because helium is an important

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Speaker 4: thing to have, but also because that gas would have

281
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Speaker 4: been vented otherwise. And you know a good example of

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Speaker 4: this is in Algeria, they have one field with helium

283
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Speaker 4: content that mixes in with everything else. If they're making

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Speaker 4: LNG from the gas stream in Algeria, then they can

285
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Speaker 4: recover the helium. But if they're putting it into the

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Speaker 4: pipeline to Europe, which unfortunately is where the majority of

287
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Speaker 4: it's going right now because gas prices are very high

288
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Speaker 4: in Europe, it can't be recovered. And that helium when

289
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Speaker 4: you turn on your stove is just going to escape

290
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Speaker 4: into the atmosphere.

291
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Speaker 2: Oh that's really interesting. So even if you don't have

292
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Speaker 2: a market or an easy way to sell it at

293
00:15:11,080 --> 00:15:14,680
Speaker 2: the time, what the strategic reserve did was allow us

294
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Speaker 2: to capture something that would have been otherwise lost permanently

295
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Speaker 2: had we not had this thing. So tell us the

296
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Speaker 2: story because I'm evidently we don't have it anymore. What

297
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Speaker 2: was in it? Where was it and where did it go?

298
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Speaker 2: Who do we sell it to? What happened?

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Speaker 4: So it was primarily the helium that was the Hugoton field,

300
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Speaker 4: which is this very large field across Texas and Oklahoma

301
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Speaker 4: and parts of Kansas.

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Speaker 3: That's close to Amarillo, isn't it.

303
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Speaker 4: So the field is very large. The gas production from that,

304
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Speaker 4: we started recovering helium. We were always the Saudi Arabia

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Speaker 4: of helium, if you will. You know. A side note

306
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Speaker 4: there is that the Hinden Bird was designed for helium,

307
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Speaker 4: and the US Senate blocked export of helium for military

308
00:16:01,040 --> 00:16:03,120
Speaker 4: reasons to Germany, and that's why they filled it up

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Speaker 4: with hydrogen instead. So this has been going on for

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Speaker 4: a while, and we talk about it being a small

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00:16:09,160 --> 00:16:12,960
Speaker 4: molecule and difficult to trap underground. A good example of

312
00:16:12,960 --> 00:16:16,320
Speaker 4: that is when it was first found in Kansas. Originally,

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Speaker 4: helium was discovered by looking at the sun during an

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Speaker 4: eclipse and someone was able to see from the spectral

315
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Speaker 4: lines that there's another element out here. And then they

316
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Speaker 4: found an inert gas well in Kansas and they were

317
00:16:29,200 --> 00:16:35,040
Speaker 4: able to distill the helium basically by putting the gas

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Speaker 4: through a bunch of really narrow glass tubes, and the

319
00:16:39,600 --> 00:16:42,320
Speaker 4: helium will go through the glass because it's such a

320
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Speaker 4: small molecule and that's how they were able to distill it.

321
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Speaker 4: So anyways, we built the world's only helium reserve during

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Speaker 4: the Cold War, and this is something that the science

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Speaker 4: community was very excited about because they recognized that this

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Speaker 4: is really important for a bunch of science and physics,

325
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Speaker 4: but more importantly, think about the long term. We're living

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Speaker 4: in interesting times in many ways, but an interesting time

327
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Speaker 4: if you think very long term in terms of the

328
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Speaker 4: last hundred years have seen drilling for natural gas all

329
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Speaker 4: over the place, and particularly for conventional deposits. It's important

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Speaker 4: to understand you can't find helium and economic quantities in

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Speaker 4: unconventional resources like shale. So prior to our company, the

332
00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:31,440
Speaker 4: last new discovery of helium that was commercialized in North

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Speaker 4: America's fifty years ago, the oil and gas companies aren't

334
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Speaker 4: looking for these conventional fields anymore. But the American Physical

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00:17:38,960 --> 00:17:42,080
Speaker 4: Society got very upset when we talked about selling off

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Speaker 4: the helium reserve, and they said, basically, this is a

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00:17:46,800 --> 00:17:49,439
Speaker 4: molecule that's only getting more important. We're finding more and

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00:17:49,480 --> 00:17:51,640
Speaker 4: more uses for it, and if you think about today,

339
00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:55,560
Speaker 4: what are some future uses. They're using this for quantum

340
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Speaker 4: computing to keep things very cold, they're using it for

341
00:17:58,840 --> 00:18:02,480
Speaker 4: nuclear fusion, for the superconducting magnets. They're now using it

342
00:18:02,720 --> 00:18:05,280
Speaker 4: in I think X Energy just filed for an IPO.

343
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Speaker 4: Those are helium cooled fission reactors that they're building SMRs,

344
00:18:09,440 --> 00:18:13,520
Speaker 4: because like if you think about Fukushima, that was a

345
00:18:13,520 --> 00:18:16,320
Speaker 4: water cooled reactor and the water got hot and then

346
00:18:16,480 --> 00:18:18,880
Speaker 4: the water turned into steam and it got so hot

347
00:18:18,920 --> 00:18:21,560
Speaker 4: that the steam separated into hydrogen and oxygen and then

348
00:18:21,640 --> 00:18:23,960
Speaker 4: things blew up. But because helium is such a good

349
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Speaker 4: heat transfer medium, you can use helium as the primary

350
00:18:27,200 --> 00:18:30,719
Speaker 4: loop there in these reactors and it makes it passively safe.

351
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Speaker 4: So the physics community was very up in arms when

352
00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:36,679
Speaker 4: we decided to sell this off because they said, you know,

353
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Speaker 4: what happens fifty years from now when we need this

354
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Speaker 4: for space exploration and quantum computing and everything else, And

355
00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:46,480
Speaker 4: there's no one drilling for conventional gas anymore. So you know,

356
00:18:46,560 --> 00:18:50,960
Speaker 4: that's sort of the issue there, and you know, we

357
00:18:50,960 --> 00:18:52,720
Speaker 4: can get into why we sold it off, it won't

358
00:18:52,760 --> 00:18:53,960
Speaker 4: be a terrible hold on it.

359
00:18:53,960 --> 00:18:55,919
Speaker 2: Where did it go? Because I can't imagine, like, have

360
00:18:55,960 --> 00:18:58,280
Speaker 2: we bought the strategic helium reserve. Let's just go make

361
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Speaker 2: a bunch of balloons, like I assume that didn't happened.

362
00:19:00,400 --> 00:19:02,240
Speaker 2: So who bought it and what did they do with it?

363
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Speaker 4: So we actually stockpiled two things during the Cold War

364
00:19:05,480 --> 00:19:08,480
Speaker 4: helium and ten ten is also used for semiconductors. We

365
00:19:08,520 --> 00:19:10,840
Speaker 4: sold them both off prior to right now when we

366
00:19:10,880 --> 00:19:13,600
Speaker 4: started building semiconductor fabs in the US. So that's sort

367
00:19:13,600 --> 00:19:18,000
Speaker 4: of a not a great choice necessarily with regard to

368
00:19:18,000 --> 00:19:23,159
Speaker 4: the helium reserve. When they originally started, they took the

369
00:19:23,200 --> 00:19:25,959
Speaker 4: helium out of the gas stream, and to your point, Tracy,

370
00:19:26,840 --> 00:19:30,080
Speaker 4: they put it into an old natural gas field in Amarillo.

371
00:19:30,359 --> 00:19:33,320
Speaker 4: So that's why the helium reserve was there, and they

372
00:19:33,359 --> 00:19:37,960
Speaker 4: filled that up. But the government never appropriated funds to

373
00:19:38,200 --> 00:19:42,440
Speaker 4: pay for the helium. So the Bureau of Land Management

374
00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:46,120
Speaker 4: or their predecessor, basically owed the government three hundred million

375
00:19:46,200 --> 00:19:49,760
Speaker 4: dollars for this because no funds were appropriated, and that

376
00:19:49,800 --> 00:19:52,440
Speaker 4: three hundred million dollars was accruing interest to the point

377
00:19:52,520 --> 00:19:56,680
Speaker 4: where I think in nineteen ninety six, Newt Gingrich got

378
00:19:56,720 --> 00:19:59,160
Speaker 4: into power and it was time to start talking about

379
00:19:59,160 --> 00:20:03,320
Speaker 4: privatizing things. And Christopher Cox went to the House floor

380
00:20:03,359 --> 00:20:05,600
Speaker 4: and basically said, you know, do you know the government,

381
00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:08,680
Speaker 4: this dumb government has one point four billion dollars of

382
00:20:08,720 --> 00:20:13,080
Speaker 4: party balloon debt. And a bill was quickly passed and

383
00:20:13,560 --> 00:20:16,480
Speaker 4: you know, signed by Clinton, and we decided to sell

384
00:20:16,520 --> 00:20:19,080
Speaker 4: the whole thing off. The original plan, I believe, was

385
00:20:19,119 --> 00:20:22,959
Speaker 4: to sell it off in equal parts over thirty years

386
00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:26,280
Speaker 4: for exactly one point four billion, with no regard to

387
00:20:26,320 --> 00:20:28,680
Speaker 4: the market, just to pay off the government so called

388
00:20:28,720 --> 00:20:31,600
Speaker 4: party balloon debt. And the physics community was up in

389
00:20:31,680 --> 00:20:33,840
Speaker 4: arms about this. But you know, they don't have that

390
00:20:33,920 --> 00:20:34,640
Speaker 4: many senators.

391
00:20:36,200 --> 00:20:37,879
Speaker 3: That's amazing, and I feel like we could do a

392
00:20:37,880 --> 00:20:42,600
Speaker 3: whole episode just on the helium reserve. But serious question,

393
00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:45,399
Speaker 3: I guess, or maybe a related question, how difficult is

394
00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:49,440
Speaker 3: helium to store? Because we're used to you know, maybe

395
00:20:49,480 --> 00:20:52,440
Speaker 3: you go into the party balloon shop in the Party

396
00:20:52,480 --> 00:20:57,160
Speaker 3: Balloon district of downtown New York and you see canisters

397
00:20:57,200 --> 00:20:59,359
Speaker 3: of helium gas lying there. But on the other hand,

398
00:20:59,359 --> 00:21:02,920
Speaker 3: I imagine you're talking about the world's smallest molecule. As

399
00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:06,440
Speaker 3: you've said, it must escape quite easily.

400
00:21:07,359 --> 00:21:10,399
Speaker 4: So if you decide to get into the party balloon

401
00:21:10,520 --> 00:21:13,200
Speaker 4: business and you're going to take over where Party City

402
00:21:13,280 --> 00:21:15,920
Speaker 4: left off. You know, by the way, the only time

403
00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:19,040
Speaker 4: people usually friends on the street bringing up helium with

404
00:21:19,080 --> 00:21:21,920
Speaker 4: me is every time there's a helium shortage, and we're

405
00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:24,520
Speaker 4: now looking at probably the fifth in the last twenty years,

406
00:21:25,119 --> 00:21:28,720
Speaker 4: party City goes bankrupt. And that's the industry. But if

407
00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:30,760
Speaker 4: you wanted to get into that industry, and you wanted

408
00:21:30,760 --> 00:21:34,080
Speaker 4: to get canisters of helium, and I hope, being an

409
00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:36,800
Speaker 4: honest person, you would get canisters of pure helium, because

410
00:21:36,840 --> 00:21:39,639
Speaker 4: I've heard a lot about people, you know, going fifty

411
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:42,120
Speaker 4: to fifty in your balloons don't stay in the air

412
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:44,640
Speaker 4: as long as you remember them when you were a kid. Candle,

413
00:21:44,760 --> 00:21:48,639
Speaker 4: the helium will be leaking around the threads of the

414
00:21:48,720 --> 00:21:52,720
Speaker 4: valve a little bit each day. And the world trade

415
00:21:52,760 --> 00:21:55,439
Speaker 4: of helium is actually done in the form of a

416
00:21:55,480 --> 00:22:00,280
Speaker 4: liquid Where a liquid helium ISO container can be on

417
00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:04,680
Speaker 4: a ship. It can hold roughly five times more than

418
00:22:04,920 --> 00:22:07,919
Speaker 4: a what used to be called a tube trailer of

419
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:11,960
Speaker 4: you know, sort of a two foot in diameter forty

420
00:22:12,000 --> 00:22:14,159
Speaker 4: foot long tube, and you'll see these on the highway

421
00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:15,960
Speaker 4: where there's about ten of them stacked on the back

422
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:19,160
Speaker 4: of a tractor trailer. That that's a steel tube trailer. Now,

423
00:22:19,240 --> 00:22:23,680
Speaker 4: because of the hydrogen industry, there is carbon fiber overwrapped

424
00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:26,000
Speaker 4: trailers that can hold about a third as much as

425
00:22:26,000 --> 00:22:29,840
Speaker 4: a liquid helium container, So it changes the transportation differential

426
00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:32,480
Speaker 4: a little bit, and that's what we use. But it

427
00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 4: shipped around the world as a liquid, and as a

428
00:22:34,320 --> 00:22:38,600
Speaker 4: liquid it is perishable, So that's part of the reason

429
00:22:38,680 --> 00:22:42,920
Speaker 4: that whenever you know the sort of timeline here is

430
00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:46,439
Speaker 4: I have nothing interesting to say about geopolitics, but the

431
00:22:46,520 --> 00:22:50,320
Speaker 4: Kataris have said they are going to wait until hostilities

432
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:53,639
Speaker 4: have ceased and then they will restart LNG production, and

433
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:55,919
Speaker 4: I read that it'll take three or four weeks or something.

434
00:22:56,760 --> 00:22:59,080
Speaker 4: The helium industry is going to take longer than that

435
00:22:59,160 --> 00:23:03,160
Speaker 4: to recover from them, because there's only about three thousand

436
00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:06,080
Speaker 4: of these liquid helium containers in the world. They're highly

437
00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:11,240
Speaker 4: highly specialized because you're talking about taking a huge amount

438
00:23:11,560 --> 00:23:14,359
Speaker 4: by weight of liquid helium, which is at four degrees

439
00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:18,480
Speaker 4: kelvin and putting it in a container where it's essentially

440
00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:21,200
Speaker 4: a very fancy thermost but this has to be hardy

441
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:22,760
Speaker 4: enough that you can put it on a truck and

442
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:24,960
Speaker 4: put it on a ship, but it's warming up the

443
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:29,439
Speaker 4: whole time. And the very best containers can hold the

444
00:23:29,480 --> 00:23:32,040
Speaker 4: helium for about forty five days before the pressure gets

445
00:23:32,080 --> 00:23:35,560
Speaker 4: too high and they'll essentially vent themselves. So it makes

446
00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:38,359
Speaker 4: it very perishable, and it makes the containers very important.

447
00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:42,760
Speaker 4: Where I would assume that the Katari LNG facilities had

448
00:23:42,760 --> 00:23:44,840
Speaker 4: filled a lot of liquid helium containers that are now

449
00:23:44,880 --> 00:23:48,560
Speaker 4: stuck somewhere, yeah, and those are slowly warming up. And

450
00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:52,040
Speaker 4: on the other hand, to deal with a crisis like this,

451
00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:54,439
Speaker 4: the big industrial gas companies are now going to have

452
00:23:54,480 --> 00:23:57,160
Speaker 4: to scramble to move containers to other sources to try

453
00:23:57,200 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 4: and get helium out of storage where they've built some

454
00:23:59,320 --> 00:24:03,320
Speaker 4: private story since the federal reserve is now essentially gone,

455
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 4: and that's going to cause a lot of problems because

456
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:08,160
Speaker 4: it's just a very limited supply of these.

457
00:24:08,440 --> 00:24:10,639
Speaker 2: I just want to say, and I really mean this

458
00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:13,920
Speaker 2: with no offense, but anytime that we have a guest

459
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:16,360
Speaker 2: who sort of is talking a lot about science and technology,

460
00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:18,520
Speaker 2: I do a little bit of live fact checking guy

461
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:20,680
Speaker 2: like look up all these things, and it's like, Yep,

462
00:24:20,760 --> 00:24:23,800
Speaker 2: we really did have something called the Helium Privatization Act

463
00:24:24,160 --> 00:24:27,080
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, just about one point party billion out

464
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 2: and party balloon debt. It really is perceived to be

465
00:24:30,080 --> 00:24:33,359
Speaker 2: important in quantum computing. It really is perceived to be

466
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:37,439
Speaker 2: important in small modular reactors. So I just, you know,

467
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:40,439
Speaker 2: for the listeners out there, because I can't you know,

468
00:24:40,560 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about any of this stuff. This

469
00:24:42,359 --> 00:24:45,520
Speaker 2: all seems to check out. Helium seems to be pretty important.

470
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:48,000
Speaker 2: Now here's something I've learned. I have learned over the years,

471
00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:51,400
Speaker 2: which is that anytime we are talking about niche commodities,

472
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:55,719
Speaker 2: it's often like harder to find anything resembling spot prices

473
00:24:55,760 --> 00:24:57,959
Speaker 2: at all, including a lot of the rare earths and stuff.

474
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 2: Sometimes you'll see these tech but they're like ancient or

475
00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:05,239
Speaker 2: not up today or whatever or whatever that maybe there

476
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:07,399
Speaker 2: was a futures market at one point but it like

477
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 2: got discontinued in twenty eighteen or something. There's actually literally

478
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:15,600
Speaker 2: nothing on the terminal about helium pricing. And I tell

479
00:25:15,680 --> 00:25:19,200
Speaker 2: us about why that is and how what is how

480
00:25:19,280 --> 00:25:22,160
Speaker 2: transparent is the helium market and what is the cost

481
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 2: of a ton of helium or whatever. What is the

482
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:27,240
Speaker 2: denomination of helium in terms of how much is sold

483
00:25:27,280 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 2: in a chunk? Tell us about that market.

484
00:25:28,960 --> 00:25:30,760
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's a pretty unique market. I mean, there

485
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:33,480
Speaker 4: used to be more markets like this, but companies like

486
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:35,919
Speaker 4: Bloomberg and many others, Yeah, help to make things a

487
00:25:35,920 --> 00:25:40,000
Speaker 4: lot more efficient. In general, the price to the end user,

488
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 4: it's considered to be about a six billion cubic foot

489
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:48,160
Speaker 4: per year market and worth about six billion dollars a year.

490
00:25:48,400 --> 00:25:51,480
Speaker 4: So that implies about one thousand dollars per MCF to

491
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 4: the end user. And you know that's mcf is a

492
00:25:56,400 --> 00:25:59,159
Speaker 4: thousand cubic feet. That's the standard denomination that they use

493
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:02,360
Speaker 4: in natural gas, you know, So that implies that it's

494
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:06,120
Speaker 4: a dollar for one cubic foot. And since you insisted

495
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 4: on bringing a helium balloon into the studio, I would

496
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:12,360
Speaker 4: fact check you and say, what did you pay for that? Oh?

497
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,879
Speaker 2: Well, I actually don't know, but definitely more than a dollar. Yeah,

498
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:17,600
Speaker 2: and definitely that's not a cubic foot.

499
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:19,520
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to ask our producer and then he

500
00:26:19,560 --> 00:26:21,040
Speaker 3: can tell us in a few minutes.

501
00:26:21,080 --> 00:26:23,560
Speaker 2: But keep going while we wait for a response for

502
00:26:23,600 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 2: our producer, what do you tell us about the current

503
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 2: market environment and how twenty twenty six looks for twenty

504
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:31,440
Speaker 2: twenty five verse twenty sixteen, et cetera.

505
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:35,400
Speaker 4: So the market had been trending down since the last shortage,

506
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:38,320
Speaker 4: which ended in around twenty twenty two, when the Russians

507
00:26:38,320 --> 00:26:40,560
Speaker 4: brought production online, and that was a bit of a

508
00:26:40,600 --> 00:26:44,639
Speaker 4: surprise to the industry because a German firm, Lindy, had

509
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:49,160
Speaker 4: been involved with building the Russian facility. They're a more

510
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 4: gas project which processes natural gas, liquids and other things

511
00:26:53,280 --> 00:26:56,000
Speaker 4: out of a big gas stream and also recovers the

512
00:26:56,040 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 4: helium from their Canda and Kubecta fields. And the general

513
00:27:00,600 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 4: consensus because of the Ukraine War is that the Russians

514
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 4: wouldn't be able to get that plant to run without

515
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:09,800
Speaker 4: the help of the Germans. And they started up the

516
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:13,240
Speaker 4: first train and had a very large fire, and they

517
00:27:13,240 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 4: started up the second train and had a very large explosion.

518
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:19,120
Speaker 4: So everyone has sort of written that off. But they

519
00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:22,960
Speaker 4: were able to get that production up and running and

520
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 4: start bringing it into the market. There are sanctions on

521
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 4: bringing liquid helium containers to Sanctions might not be the

522
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:33,800
Speaker 4: right word, but I believe there's a state Department restriction

523
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 4: on taking liquid helium containers from the US to Russia

524
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:39,960
Speaker 4: because it's dual use, it could have a military application.

525
00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 4: There's also sanctions on taking Russian helium at all the

526
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:46,959
Speaker 4: places like Europe. So the Russians went into production and

527
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:50,760
Speaker 4: basically flooded the Chinese market and it sort of spread

528
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 4: out from there a little bit. It's somewhat limited the

529
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:57,960
Speaker 4: impact they were able to have because of the lack

530
00:27:57,960 --> 00:28:01,120
Speaker 4: of liquid helium containers the lack of end markets for them,

531
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 4: but prices have been trending down. I will say, you know,

532
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:05,879
Speaker 4: an answer to your question, why isn't it obvious what

533
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:09,920
Speaker 4: the helium price is. There's a confidentiality clause in every

534
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 4: helium contract, so we sell on long term contracts, primarily

535
00:28:14,160 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 4: to the big industrial gas companies, but those are all confidential,

536
00:28:18,840 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 4: and certainly from a commodity trader point of view, having

537
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:26,720
Speaker 4: an opaque market probably is you know, a pretty good things. Yeah,

538
00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,680
Speaker 4: but maybe that originated with the fact that the government

539
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 4: was selling the helium for exactly one point four billion

540
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 4: and no one wanted to, you know, have a futures

541
00:28:36,000 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 4: market there. But also, as you guys know, you know,

542
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 4: futures markets sort of need to be deliverable, and there's

543
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 4: no longer any sort of global hub. You could have. Potentially,

544
00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 4: when the Federal Reserve was a public facility where you

545
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 4: could inject gas back into it, you could have built

546
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 4: a futures market around that, but no one did.

547
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:58,959
Speaker 3: It kind of reminds me of plane delivery contracts, where

548
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:01,160
Speaker 3: you know, the announcement comes out and it's always at

549
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:05,080
Speaker 3: a list price. So like an airline buys one hundred

550
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,360
Speaker 3: million dollars worth of Boeing planes, but the contracts are

551
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 3: so custom and opaque and individualized that like, no one

552
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:14,520
Speaker 3: really ever knows how.

553
00:29:14,480 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 2: Much they serplane. That's super interesting.

554
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 3: Our producer Dash, by the way, got back to us

555
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:22,520
Speaker 3: and he says the balloon costs nine dollars, which is

556
00:29:22,560 --> 00:29:24,560
Speaker 3: more than I would have expected. So what do I

557
00:29:24,600 --> 00:29:45,840
Speaker 3: know about balloons? First of all, from your vantage point

558
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:50,520
Speaker 3: in the market, what supply disruptions are you seeing right now?

559
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 3: And then secondly, how long does it actually take those

560
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 3: disruptions to work their way into the market and start

561
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 3: to hit prices? Given that we just talked about how

562
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:02,040
Speaker 3: most of the stuff is selling on a very long

563
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:03,320
Speaker 3: term forward basis.

564
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, the second part of your question is particularly germane.

565
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 4: But you know, the Katari facilities in total, we're producing

566
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 4: north of thirty percent of world helium supply. And given

567
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 4: that there's no federal helium reserve anymore, and given that

568
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 4: this is a perishable commodity essentially because it starts warming

569
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 4: up once you fill a liquid helium container, that's a

570
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 4: huge problem. The longer this goes on, it becomes more

571
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:33,200
Speaker 4: and more of a problem. But to your point on timing,

572
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:36,920
Speaker 4: there's a leading helium consultant who we've worked with for

573
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 4: a long time who I think put it very well

574
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 4: where he described the situation last week as it's like

575
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:45,560
Speaker 4: a tsunami where the water has already gone out, but

576
00:30:45,600 --> 00:30:47,480
Speaker 4: we're all still on the beach and the wave hasn't

577
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:51,280
Speaker 4: hit yet, and the last cargoes that left Cutter are

578
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 4: probably just now getting delivered to customers, so you know,

579
00:30:55,000 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 4: the real problems are coming in the next month.

580
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 2: This is how everyone, by the way, an Energy are

581
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 2: thinking about this moment right now, because buy and large

582
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,480
Speaker 2: markets are up for oil, gas, et cetera. But maybe

583
00:31:06,520 --> 00:31:09,880
Speaker 2: you know, not hyper catastrophic levels, and everyone's like this

584
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:12,600
Speaker 2: better open up soon because the water has come out,

585
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 2: and we're going to have real problems the longer we

586
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 2: have these disruptions. It's interesting too, like this idea that

587
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:22,880
Speaker 2: you know, here's something I wondered about, and it again

588
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,240
Speaker 2: relates to the some of the conversations we've had about

589
00:31:26,280 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 2: rare earth's in the past. The nominal size of this

590
00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:33,080
Speaker 2: market even right now does not sound very large. A

591
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:36,720
Speaker 2: six billion dollar global market. This is the same thing

592
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:39,480
Speaker 2: we talked to Haaveer Blase here at Bloomberg about rare earths.

593
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:42,959
Speaker 2: The total dollar amounts for this stuff are not that high.

594
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 2: And it always makes me wonder does that impair exploration

595
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:51,880
Speaker 2: and production appetites that It's like, look, yeah, we could

596
00:31:51,920 --> 00:31:54,640
Speaker 2: go looking for new fields, we could drill here, et cetera.

597
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:57,360
Speaker 2: But this just even in the best of times, is

598
00:31:57,440 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 2: not going to be a great market. And so we have,

599
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:01,240
Speaker 2: like other things is on our mind to do. And

600
00:32:01,280 --> 00:32:05,400
Speaker 2: I'm curious, like whether small nominal markets make it harder

601
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 2: to mobilize capital.

602
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 4: And you know, I don't know what the price of

603
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:14,239
Speaker 4: uranium is today, but that's a similar sized market. And

604
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 4: you know what you see in these industries when prices

605
00:32:19,120 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 4: you know, go up or there's a shortage is essentially

606
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:27,480
Speaker 4: people start doing exploration at the desk where they're saying,

607
00:32:27,480 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 4: who almost found this in the past, because it's too

608
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 4: expensive to go do it from first principles. If you

609
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 4: think about the size of the oil and gas market,

610
00:32:34,240 --> 00:32:39,760
Speaker 4: it's what hundreds of times larger than helium, So you know,

611
00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 4: the only people who could afford to explore at scale

612
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 4: in North America where the oil and gas drillers. So

613
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 4: we've found a niche where we're able to do that

614
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 4: because it's a lot cheaper than in some other places.

615
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:55,520
Speaker 4: But that is really what separates us as a company

616
00:32:55,600 --> 00:32:59,880
Speaker 4: in terms of we've been focused on grassroots exploration, saying

617
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:03,520
Speaker 4: the best stuff hasn't been found yet, and you know

618
00:33:03,560 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 4: in those other industries, I think that's a problem going

619
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 4: forward for a number of critical minerals and niche commodities

620
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 4: where you can say, well, hypothetically there's rare earths in

621
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 4: North Carolina, but how much do you want to spend

622
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:19,840
Speaker 4: looking for them, because it can cost hundreds of millions

623
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 4: of dollars to go through holes in the ground.

624
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 3: You know, you said earlier that there had been five

625
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 3: previous helium shortages. I guess in recent times what happened

626
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 3: during those Like how much substitution did you see of

627
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:37,360
Speaker 3: alternative gases? I guess I don't know what those would be,

628
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 3: ne on maybe, And then how much rerooting did you

629
00:33:41,200 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 3: see from like one geographic area to another, Like I

630
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 3: guess what I'm asking is how flexible is the industry

631
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 3: that relies on helium?

632
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:54,080
Speaker 4: So answering that in reverse, you know, the industrial gas

633
00:33:54,120 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 4: companies that really distribute the helium and move it around

634
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 4: the world and break it into smaller quantities to serve

635
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 4: the end user. They do a phenomenal job with this,

636
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 4: but it's a very very difficult problem. So when there's

637
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 4: a shortage, there's absolutely a problem, particularly because of the

638
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 4: specialized logistics, and there's not you know, a bunch of

639
00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 4: their extra helium containers lying around and things like that.

640
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:20,920
Speaker 4: In terms of what was your question about the previous

641
00:34:20,920 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 4: helium shortages.

642
00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically how much substitution did you see? Like are

643
00:34:25,200 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 3: there other gases like neon that you can use instead

644
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 3: of helium? And that basically just how easy is it

645
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:34,920
Speaker 3: for people to adapt to an actual helium shortage?

646
00:34:35,120 --> 00:34:37,840
Speaker 4: So the first shortage was in two thousand and seven,

647
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 4: and back then we had a lot more options in

648
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:46,439
Speaker 4: terms of in Europe, they've never really had a lot

649
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 4: of helium the way we have in the US. So

650
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 4: for that reason, they don't really have party balloons over there,

651
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:53,960
Speaker 4: which is the most visible thing for the average personet

652
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:58,640
Speaker 4: But they also have always used a lot more argone

653
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,320
Speaker 4: in welding. Helium is used in inert gas welding because

654
00:35:02,520 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 4: it is a dirt, because it has high heat transfer,

655
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,280
Speaker 4: they've always used more urgun. We've always used more helium

656
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 4: in the US, and there was a lot of substitution

657
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 4: of saying, okay, we still need helium if you're welding

658
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:17,600
Speaker 4: stainless steel, titanium aluminum if you're doing thicker welds, but

659
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:20,600
Speaker 4: in some of the lower spec welding applications we were

660
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:24,640
Speaker 4: able to substitute argon. And you've also seen recycling where

661
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 4: you know, if you're doing semiconductor lithography, you can't really

662
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 4: recycle because you're putting other things in the gas, but

663
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:33,839
Speaker 4: if you're purely doing it for a cooling loop, you

664
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,239
Speaker 4: can start to recycle. And my understanding is that the

665
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:39,840
Speaker 4: MRI manufacturer is prior to two thousand and seven, they

666
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:43,280
Speaker 4: would build an MRI fill it up with liquid helium,

667
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 4: make sure it works at the factory and then just

668
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 4: vent it into the atmosphere and shift the unit and

669
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:50,839
Speaker 4: it would be refilled when it got there. So there's

670
00:35:50,840 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 4: certainly been demand destruction from that. The other side of

671
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:57,640
Speaker 4: that coin is that there's very little opportunity for additional

672
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 4: recycling or additional substitution at this point. And you know,

673
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:05,360
Speaker 4: I sort of tell people, if you're still using helium

674
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 4: after four global shortages, you have to use helium.

675
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:10,719
Speaker 2: There are ballue There are helium balloons in Europe. In

676
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:15,760
Speaker 2: fact checked that they do exist. They perhaps I actually

677
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:21,000
Speaker 2: found a this is a very European. This is the

678
00:36:21,000 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 2: most European looking document I've ever seen, which is this

679
00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:27,760
Speaker 2: really serious like think Tank report on the Intentional Release

680
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 2: of Balloons and Confetti and the Baltic Sea Area Scoping Study,

681
00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:36,920
Speaker 2: a collection of existing information, regulation and best practices published

682
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:40,600
Speaker 2: by the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, is a fifty

683
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:43,640
Speaker 2: page paper on the release of balloons. Anyway, sorry, but

684
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:46,200
Speaker 2: I take your point that for I but I also

685
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 2: found a Reddit post someone asking where they can get

686
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:50,440
Speaker 2: helium balloons, So maybe they're not. Maybe they're not.

687
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 4: If the EU has regulations on it. I'm willing to

688
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:55,000
Speaker 4: believe they've got it now.

689
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:58,680
Speaker 2: There's there's something going on there. You know. The thing,

690
00:36:58,840 --> 00:37:01,960
Speaker 2: the big takeaway I have from this conversation, it's just

691
00:37:02,040 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 2: going back to thinking about that thirty year release schedule

692
00:37:05,680 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 2: from the helium reserve, and especially if you're not doing

693
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 2: it at something resembling a market price, that must have

694
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:16,640
Speaker 2: just obliterated any like private sector activity. Because if there's

695
00:37:16,680 --> 00:37:18,520
Speaker 2: going to be this fixed apply coming out too the

696
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 2: market and it's not even price sensitive in any way,

697
00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:26,200
Speaker 2: why would you ever like build out private production at

698
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:26,800
Speaker 2: that point.

699
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 4: One hundred percent? That's been a big issue. And you

700
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 4: know when I first started looking at this issue in

701
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 4: twenty eleven, because my dad was involved in trying to

702
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:41,440
Speaker 4: advocate for fusion fission hybrid reactors and he shared a

703
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:44,359
Speaker 4: Brookings MIT conference on this and he was very disappointed.

704
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 4: He said, the smartest guy there told him he was

705
00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:48,239
Speaker 4: wasting his time because we were going to run out

706
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:51,399
Speaker 4: of helium before they could get the technology working. And

707
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:53,560
Speaker 4: you know, I fool He called me and I said,

708
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 4: I thought that was for party balloons down. Cursed to

709
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 4: be on the other side of that conversation for the

710
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 4: rest of my life. But the America in physical society

711
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 4: at the time, you know, put out a statement saying,

712
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:07,840
Speaker 4: not only should you do not sell this, helium is

713
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:10,040
Speaker 4: the one thing we should be building a bigger stockpile

714
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 4: of for the future. And you know, I sort of

715
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:17,480
Speaker 4: compared the situation to what happened in with uranium in

716
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:19,800
Speaker 4: the Megatons to megawatts program after the fall of the

717
00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:23,600
Speaker 4: Soviet Union. We took a bunch of their former Soviet

718
00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 4: nuclear weapons, we turned them into power plant fuel just

719
00:38:27,200 --> 00:38:31,320
Speaker 4: because of proliferation reasons, and sold that into the market.

720
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 4: And similar thing. You know, you dump a bunch of

721
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:36,520
Speaker 4: supply into the market for a long time and then

722
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:39,719
Speaker 4: there's no incentive for exploration, and uranium prices went up,

723
00:38:39,760 --> 00:38:42,920
Speaker 4: you know, five hundred percent nearly two thousands. So that's

724
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:45,839
Speaker 4: certainly been a factor in terms of you know, why

725
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 4: haven't people been doing this the whole time?

726
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 3: Well, okay, on that note, you're the founder and CEO

727
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 3: of North American Helium, and we know that helium prices

728
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:56,399
Speaker 3: are going up, even though we don't have a very

729
00:38:56,400 --> 00:39:00,560
Speaker 3: good benchmark, but you know, broadly, we know that it's

730
00:39:00,600 --> 00:39:02,680
Speaker 3: going to get more expensive. What do you do with

731
00:39:02,800 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 3: that price signal, Do you invest more? Do you expand?

732
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:10,920
Speaker 3: Given the limitations around you know, exploring for LERG and

733
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:12,080
Speaker 3: things like that, what do you do.

734
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 4: We're on the unique end of the spectrum in the

735
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 4: industry because we're not running a ten billion dollar energy

736
00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:22,200
Speaker 4: project or something like that, because we're producing. We're only

737
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 4: drilling for helium from non hydrocarbon sources, so we're essentially

738
00:39:26,040 --> 00:39:30,160
Speaker 4: looking for We're drilling into older rocks that pre date

739
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:32,799
Speaker 4: plant life on Earth, so there's not a lot of

740
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,320
Speaker 4: organic material there. So you're drilling for fields of helium

741
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 4: and nitrogen and these exist, and you know where we

742
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 4: are primarily operating in southwest Saskatchewan and Canada. They had

743
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 4: found a field like this in the nineteen sixties. They

744
00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:50,760
Speaker 4: wrote helium legislation, which made them very unique. But because

745
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:53,600
Speaker 4: of the combination of the forced sales from the federal

746
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 4: stockpile keeping helium prices low and nitrogen being worthless because

747
00:39:58,000 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 4: it's already eighty percent of the atmosphere, no one ever

748
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:05,239
Speaker 4: came back and looked at this. But we're certainly, I

749
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 4: would say, we were already going pretty fast, certainly in

750
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:10,759
Speaker 4: an environment like this. You know, our mission is to

751
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:14,880
Speaker 4: support science and industry. So all of a sudden, this

752
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:16,719
Speaker 4: is a big problem. We're going to do everything we

753
00:40:16,800 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 4: can to increase our rate of exploration, bringing new plants

754
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:24,200
Speaker 4: onto production, and you know, really trying to support some

755
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:27,120
Speaker 4: of the most vital uses of helium then we've had

756
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 4: in previous shortages. One of the problems is it's not

757
00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:32,719
Speaker 4: a question of for the end user. It's not a

758
00:40:32,760 --> 00:40:34,719
Speaker 4: question of whether or not you get the helium or not.

759
00:40:35,320 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 4: The consequences of not getting helium across the value chain

760
00:40:39,000 --> 00:40:42,160
Speaker 4: are pretty significant. If you're Party City, you go bankrupt.

761
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:45,040
Speaker 4: If you're a chip manufacturer, you have to shut down

762
00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:49,359
Speaker 4: chip manufacturing, and that's you know, the dollar amount there

763
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 4: is just tremendous. If you're running MRI or their cousin

764
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:58,400
Speaker 4: an MR, which is used for drug discovery and things

765
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 4: like that, if that mag and it heats up, it

766
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 4: will destroy the magnet, so you're talking about your machine

767
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 4: getting destroyed, essentially. So we're very focused on supporting those

768
00:41:10,239 --> 00:41:13,359
Speaker 4: vital end uses and if people can't do as much

769
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:16,120
Speaker 4: welding for a little while, you know, it is what

770
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:19,200
Speaker 4: it is. But in general, the price is very volatile

771
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 4: because helium is a very small percentage of the cost

772
00:41:22,200 --> 00:41:24,160
Speaker 4: of goods sold for all of us.

773
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 3: Sorry, just to press on this point. I'm going to

774
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:29,040
Speaker 3: assume that you're going to make more money in the

775
00:41:29,080 --> 00:41:32,920
Speaker 3: coming months as a result of helium supply getting squeezed

776
00:41:32,960 --> 00:41:33,520
Speaker 3: in cattarc.

777
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:34,480
Speaker 2: What are the.

778
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:39,360
Speaker 3: Major choke points at your company that you would be

779
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 3: trying to use that money to resolve. Is it actually

780
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:46,759
Speaker 3: finding new fields or is it investing in more storage capacity,

781
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 3: transportation investment? Like, what are you going to do with

782
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 3: the money?

783
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,440
Speaker 4: It's a little bit of all of the above. Our

784
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 4: focus has always been on the lack of reliability in

785
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:01,640
Speaker 4: the supply chain, which comes from two things. One is

786
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 4: the extreme concentration where you've got one Exxon Co two

787
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:09,600
Speaker 4: project in Wyoming it's a quarter of world supply. You've

788
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 4: got one LNG facility that's a third of world supply.

789
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 4: You've now got production in Russia, which has its own issues.

790
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:20,000
Speaker 4: So the geopolitics and the concentration are a problem. So

791
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,400
Speaker 4: we've been working for the last thirteen years to build

792
00:42:23,440 --> 00:42:26,800
Speaker 4: a new helium hub to create you know, helium supply

793
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:32,240
Speaker 4: from non hydridcarbon sources in Western Canada, and for that reason,

794
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:34,759
Speaker 4: we run a bunch of stuff in parallel, so we'll

795
00:42:34,760 --> 00:42:37,560
Speaker 4: be bringing a new facility online that will increase our

796
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:41,560
Speaker 4: production by forty percent later this year. We're also drilling

797
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 4: for you know, doing exploration for the next field. We're

798
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 4: also looking at doing much more grassroots exploration for just

799
00:42:51,160 --> 00:42:54,640
Speaker 4: continuing to understand the area because we have nine million

800
00:42:54,719 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 4: acres of long term helium rights, so it takes three

801
00:42:57,239 --> 00:43:02,279
Speaker 4: hours to drive across it. This is We've identified a

802
00:43:02,440 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 4: thousand structures from seismic data that we have not drilled yet,

803
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:07,440
Speaker 4: so it's really all of those things. One of the

804
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:10,759
Speaker 4: biggest things that we've been looking at is building a

805
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 4: helium liquifier in Canada because right now we have nine

806
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 4: facilities that are producing helium and we truck all of

807
00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:24,120
Speaker 4: that in carbon fiber overwrapp tube trailers down to existing

808
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:26,680
Speaker 4: liquifiers in the US Mid Continent, and there's a lot

809
00:43:26,719 --> 00:43:29,280
Speaker 4: of extra capacity down there because production has been falling

810
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:31,680
Speaker 4: in the US for the last thirty five years. But

811
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:36,000
Speaker 4: building a helium liquifire in Canada along the Trans Canada Highway,

812
00:43:36,040 --> 00:43:39,800
Speaker 4: which runs through the middle of our properties, really lowers

813
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 4: the cost. It also lowers the emissions, which is something

814
00:43:42,680 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 4: people cared a lot more about four years ago, but

815
00:43:45,160 --> 00:43:47,880
Speaker 4: we still think is important and opens up this area

816
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 4: as more of a global hub. And also, if you

817
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:56,400
Speaker 4: think about the high end customers, they're very concerned with purity.

818
00:43:56,440 --> 00:43:59,319
Speaker 4: The average customer is taking liquid helium at grade P,

819
00:43:59,480 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 4: which is sort of the industry standard. You can think

820
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 4: of it as more or less five nines purity ninety

821
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:07,719
Speaker 4: nine point nine nine nine percent pure. The leading edge

822
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:11,880
Speaker 4: chip manufacturers are now looking for six nines purity and

823
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 4: right now that primarily either comes from Exxon's facility or

824
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:18,480
Speaker 4: it comes from Cover. So all of a sudden, you've

825
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:19,799
Speaker 4: got a big issue there. And if you want to

826
00:44:19,800 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 4: think about you know, I know, you guys love all

827
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,040
Speaker 4: of the weird logistical stuff. There's only so many liquid

828
00:44:25,040 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 4: helium containers in the world. Yeah, and if you want

829
00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:29,799
Speaker 4: six nines purity, you don't ever want to fill that

830
00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 4: with five nines because you might get a molecule of

831
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:36,240
Speaker 4: hydrogen in there. So those containers are sort of kept separate,

832
00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 4: and the fiber optic manufacturers have their own containers. So

833
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:42,080
Speaker 4: now you've got an issue where the special containers for

834
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:45,160
Speaker 4: the semiconductor firms or trapped somewhere they've got to go

835
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:47,520
Speaker 4: somewhere else. You've got to say, well, we need more

836
00:44:47,560 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 4: of this from the Exon facility, and maybe that's going

837
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:53,719
Speaker 4: to cause a problem somewhere else. But building our own

838
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 4: liqui fire gives us the opportunity to meet any purity

839
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:01,440
Speaker 4: and be able to sort of you kind of go

840
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:03,319
Speaker 4: farm to table with the whole supply chain.

841
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 2: Fable. Nicholas Snyder, thank you so much for coming on

842
00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:11,200
Speaker 2: Odd Lots. I learned a lot about helium in that conversation.

843
00:45:11,360 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 4: That was fantastic, Tracy, Thanks so much your.

844
00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 2: Pleasure, Tracy. I really want to do a live episode

845
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:32,520
Speaker 2: one day in Saskatchewan with Nicholas and Maraud al Katib,

846
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 2: the Lentil King of Saskachewan. We got to have the

847
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:37,960
Speaker 2: helium King of Saskatchewan and the lentil King of Saskatchewan.

848
00:45:38,080 --> 00:45:39,839
Speaker 2: I think that'd be a great live event for us.

849
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 3: I want to go scout scout the planes for helium.

850
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:43,919
Speaker 4: Yeah.

851
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:47,920
Speaker 3: I guess now, that was a fascinating episode. I mean,

852
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:51,160
Speaker 3: all of these niche commodities are fascinating. I will say

853
00:45:51,160 --> 00:45:53,960
Speaker 3: one thing that keeps getting repeated on all of these shows,

854
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:56,120
Speaker 3: and you touched on it, already is this idea that

855
00:45:56,840 --> 00:46:00,640
Speaker 3: we haven't actually seen the physical impact just yet, and

856
00:46:00,680 --> 00:46:04,279
Speaker 3: it's coming down the line. And you can imagine there

857
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:07,839
Speaker 3: are a lot of consumers of specific products out there

858
00:46:07,880 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 3: who for now are able to say, you know, we're

859
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 3: doing all right, but in maybe a month, maybe three months,

860
00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:17,520
Speaker 3: maybe four months, if things keep going as they are,

861
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:21,239
Speaker 3: and even frankly, if the war were to stop tomorrow,

862
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:24,120
Speaker 3: you would probably have some sort of impact.

863
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:27,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, it reminds me of May twenty

864
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,279
Speaker 2: twenty five. It's like the shortages are coming to the

865
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 2: shelves because of the tariffs. Yeah, and they didn't and

866
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 2: that it's like, well, but that.

867
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 3: Was partially because Trump, Yeah started.

868
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:38,920
Speaker 2: I know, he did, he did, he did. But I

869
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:40,920
Speaker 2: do think we're at like this weird moment where it's

870
00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:43,279
Speaker 2: like nothing ever happens, but maybe it will. But yeah,

871
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 2: but everyone who we talk to in commodities essentially is

872
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,120
Speaker 2: like we're in the phase where the water has come out.

873
00:46:49,560 --> 00:46:52,320
Speaker 2: In the longer it takes for production to restart and

874
00:46:52,400 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 2: the straight to reopen, the greater the damage is going

875
00:46:55,360 --> 00:46:55,520
Speaker 2: to be.

876
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:55,920
Speaker 4: You know what.

877
00:46:55,920 --> 00:47:00,640
Speaker 2: I think it's like really interesting about this conversation particular,

878
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:03,600
Speaker 2: and they're actually from a sort of economic standpoints, like

879
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:06,640
Speaker 2: several very interesting threads in there. So first of all,

880
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 2: there's the part about how like if you're selling helium

881
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:11,320
Speaker 2: at the same clip every year of a thirty years,

882
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 2: you destroy any sort of semblance of a market. And yeah,

883
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:19,760
Speaker 2: for private production, that's interesting. Another interesting thing is that, okay,

884
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 2: like helium itself is sort of scarce and not all

885
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:25,719
Speaker 2: over the place. And then the scarcity of the containers

886
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:28,560
Speaker 2: to uh, he kept coming back to the containers. There

887
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 2: aren't that many containers in the world because if helium

888
00:47:31,040 --> 00:47:33,279
Speaker 2: can go through glass, that means it's so small and

889
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:36,440
Speaker 2: not a lot contrapant. Even the containers that exist can

890
00:47:36,480 --> 00:47:39,280
Speaker 2: only hold it for so long. And then the fact

891
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 2: that the helium that's needed for the most advanced science,

892
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:43,879
Speaker 2: as you mentioned at the end, they want the six

893
00:47:44,000 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 2: nines purity, not the five nines purity, and so they

894
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:49,879
Speaker 2: have their own separate set of containers that like it's

895
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 2: almost impossible to imagine like at this point like a

896
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:57,040
Speaker 2: sort of like truly coordinated like commodity helium just because

897
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 2: kind of like natural gas, so much of the store

898
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:03,000
Speaker 2: seems to be in the shipping and holding of it

899
00:48:03,200 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 2: rather than the commodity per se.

900
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:08,680
Speaker 3: No, it strikes me as very similar and like helium

901
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:11,279
Speaker 3: is even more gnat gas than that gas, right in

902
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:14,040
Speaker 3: the sense that we don't even have any pricing to

903
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 3: look basically, which is just shocking to me as someone

904
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:19,399
Speaker 3: who's been staring at a Bloomberg terminal for many, many years.

905
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 3: It feels really weird when you can't get a price

906
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:22,280
Speaker 3: of something.

907
00:48:22,680 --> 00:48:26,839
Speaker 2: So there is so like typically speaking, if you enter

908
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:31,200
Speaker 2: in any ticker in the terminal, something will come up

909
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 2: and there is actually a something. There's a helium No,

910
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:39,759
Speaker 2: there's a helium index, but whatever it was, it was

911
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:43,600
Speaker 2: put together by the Bureau of Land Management and they

912
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:47,200
Speaker 2: ended it in twenty eighteen, like they stopped whatever whatever

913
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:50,600
Speaker 2: this indexes in twenty eighteen. So there is not a

914
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:53,640
Speaker 2: lot of there's not a lot of data on helium,

915
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 2: and I've found that to be the case with a

916
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:59,560
Speaker 2: lot of the nisia. Yeah, discontinued. It's for historical purposes

917
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:01,240
Speaker 2: only to the dees page.

918
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:03,000
Speaker 3: Well, the other weird thing about it is it doesn't

919
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:05,280
Speaker 3: actually look that volatile at all.

920
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 2: It seems like hi, so I don't even believe that.

921
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:11,680
Speaker 3: You yeah, exactly, Okay, well, if anyone wants to create

922
00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 3: some sort of pricing index for Helium, let us know.

923
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:15,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'd love to check it out.

924
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 3: Shall we leave it there?

925
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.

926
00:49:16,680 --> 00:49:18,920
Speaker 3: This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.

927
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 3: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

928
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe wi Isn't all. You could follow me

929
00:49:23,680 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 2: at the Stalwart. Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen

930
00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:30,440
Speaker 2: armand Dash'll Bennett at dashbot In, Kale Brooks and Kale Brooks.

931
00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:33,040
Speaker 2: For more Odd Lags content, go to Bloomberg dot com

932
00:49:33,080 --> 00:49:35,319
Speaker 2: slash odd Lots or the daily newsletter and all of

933
00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:37,319
Speaker 2: our episodes and you can shout about all of these

934
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 2: topics twenty four to seven in our discord Discord dot

935
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 2: gg slash onlines.

936
00:49:41,920 --> 00:49:44,040
Speaker 3: And if you enjoy odd Lots, if you like it

937
00:49:44,239 --> 00:49:47,239
Speaker 3: when we talk about Helium and blooms, then please leave

938
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,680
Speaker 3: us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember,

939
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 3: if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to

940
00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:55,879
Speaker 3: all of our episodes absolutely add free. All you need

941
00:49:55,920 --> 00:49:58,560
Speaker 3: to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts

942
00:49:58,600 --> 00:50:01,200
Speaker 3: and follow the instructions there thanks for listening,