THE HELIUM BALLOON GOES UP – RUSSIA’S HELIUM INDUSTRY GOES TO WAR AGAINST NATO
Dances with Bears ^
| 21 June 24
| John Helmet
Posted on 06/22/2024 5:06:23 PM PDT by delta7
The balloon didn’t quite go up at Wednesday’s session of European Union (EU) officials in Brussels to decide [3] on a new round of anti-Russian sanctions, the fourteenth package of the EU’s economic war. Stopping Russian helium exports, one of the items in the package, wasn’t the sticking point.*
The Russian helium balloon is going up, nonetheless – but not in the direction the EU, US, and other NATO allies imagine. What is happening instead, Russian industry sources reveal, is that the war conditions have accelerated Russian investment into a rapid expansion of the country’s helium production, ending Russia’s need for helium imports, advancing Russia ahead of the US as the world’s leading producer and exporter, and threatening US helium producers with the destruction of their price and profitability.
At present, Russian plants produce between 4 and 5 million cubic litres of helium per year; the country needs to consume about 6 million cubic litres, and so it has been importing about 2 million litres a year. The plan for helium production in newly built plants in Amur, Irkutsk, Tatarstan, and Yakutia — sourced from gasfields in Amur and Yakutia with some of the richest helium concentrations in the world — is to generate about 75 million cubic litres annually. That’s 40% of the current world consumption of about 190 million cubic litres. With that much helium, Russia will top the US as the world’s leading producer; take the largest share of the global helium export market; and with exports to China dominate world supply for the foreseeable future.
When Europeans and Americans will want to buy balloons for their parties, fuel their medical scanning and respiration machines, save their naval divers from the bends, and drive their airships, they will have to beg the Russians and Chinese for the helium at the latter’s price. Their warfighting weapon will have been pricked.
Helium was first discovered in 1868 by French and English astronomers watching the sun’s gas emissions. There is a great deal of the gas in outer space, but the discovery of the stuff on our planet took more time to realize; then the technology to mine and refine it from underground natural gas deposits followed. In 1938 the Soviet physicist Pyotr Kapitsa reported the superfluidity of helium — the applications of this discovery have been multiplying ever since.
Today helium is widely used in high-tech production of cryogenics, superconductors, optical fibers, LCD displays, as well as in medicine, such MRI scanners, laparoscopic surgery, and life support respiration, and in partying for children and adults. Helium’s best known military application is in underwater naval warfare. The divers who placed the explosives to destroy Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022 depended on helium in their breathing apparatus.
The world market value of helium was $5.1 billion in 2022, and is estimated in the West to be growing to $7 billion by 2032, an annual growth rate of almost 6% [4]. But Russian industry reports are projecting a growth rate of double this over the next five years [5].
Western industry sources say that Russia currently produces bulk liquid helium from three different sources. Gazprom produces helium at its new Amur gas processing plant in Eastern Siberia and its older gas processing plant located in Orenburg; while the Irkutsk Oil Company (INK) [6] produces helium from its Yaraktinsky Plant located in the Ural Region. Presently, these sources account for approximately 12-13% of global supply [7].
Russian sources report that for the time being Gazprom’s Orenburg plant is the principal source of domestic supply, giving Gazprom near-monopoly control, with 80% of the domestic helium.
INK, which is owned by the billionaire Nikolai Buinov will gain no more than 15% of the market. Buinov, who is not mentioned [8] as INK’s owner in the company’s annual reports, is little known outside his home region of Irkutsk where he and his father began by selling fuel and lubricants to local goldmines. He is not under US sanctions [9].
The Russian sources also report that the main helium gas sources are in the geological formations known as the East European and Siberian basins [12]. Of the natural gas fields explored to date in Russia, 176 sites are considered as a source of helium with a concentration in natural gas of at least 0.05%. State reserves as of last year amounted to 323 million cubic metres for reserve categories A+B; between 8 billion and 9 billion if the less proved categories are included. About a third of these estimated reserves are in Yakutia (Sakha); about 7% in the Orenburg region. The best known producing sites at the moment are the Kovykta and Yaraktinskoye gasfields in Irkutsk region and Chayandinskoye in Sakha [13].
GLOBAL PRODUCTION OF HELIUM BY COUNTRY AS OF 2021 (in thousand tonnes)
This pie chart of global production is about to be revolutionized, not only by the expansion of Russian production, but by the downward pressure on helium prices which the new volume of Russian exports will cause, pushing US production of helium – which has already been declining – below the level of profitability. After appeals to the Russian government from hospitals complaining at the 40% spike in the helium prices between 2020 and 2023, it was agreed with Gazprom to stabilize the current price [16]. When Gazprom’s new Amur helium production enters the market, on top of the INK’s plant in Irkutsk region, there will be a vast surplus of Russian helium and this will be exported, starting with China.
In two years’ time, when Gazprom’s Amur gas processing plant at Svobodny reaches design capacity, it will be the largest gas processing plant in the world after the Prudhoe Bay plant in Alaska. It will be the largest helium producer in the world. US industry estimates suggest that when operating at full capacity, Gazprom’s plant will hold about one-quarter of the world market [5].
….more…
TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: flyingmonkimus; helium; theballoonisgoingup; war
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Hey Joe, how are your sanctions working? Besides weaponizing the USD, ( massive amounts of US bonds being sold off) how is it Vlad keeps making $$$$$$ billions in energy, commodities, and now helium…+ $7 Billion last month alone in oil revenues, why does senile Joe keep shooting him self in the foot?….and enriching Russia?
Vlad says thank you, you idiot.
Stupidity or by design?
1
posted on 06/22/2024 5:06:23 PM PDT
by delta7
To: delta7
We will all be destroyed in a giant fiery explosion!
2
posted on 06/22/2024 5:16:49 PM PDT
by ClearCase_guy
(It’s not “Quiet Quitting” — it’s “Going Galt”.)
To: delta7
Biden is not running the show, but he is certainly conspiring to destroy our nation.
3
posted on 06/22/2024 5:16:55 PM PDT
by jacknhoo
(Luke 12:51; Think ye, that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, no; but separation.)
To: ClearCase_guy
But the good news is we will all be laughing at the sound of our voices being like Mickey Mouse 🐭
4
posted on 06/22/2024 5:21:01 PM PDT
by Beowulf9
To: delta7
Just the usual Kremlin propaganda nonsense.
5
posted on 06/22/2024 5:23:35 PM PDT
by devere
To: delta7
The U.S. just sold its helium stockpile. Here’s why the medical world is worried.
“MRI machines need thousands of liters of liquid helium to function. Health care workers say they can’t afford any disruptions to the helium supply chain.”
NBC News article from January 25, 2024 HERE.
To: devere
I have to disagree.
This lowers the bar even for Kremlin propaganda nonsense.
7
posted on 06/22/2024 5:32:41 PM PDT
by Mr. Lucky
To: ClearCase_guy
HELIUM, UNLIKE HYDROGEN, DOES NOT EXPLODE.
That said, Russia could begin building a huge lighter-than-air airship fleet, without the inherent dangers that finally put an end to the Third Reich’s Zeppelin fleet.
8
posted on 06/22/2024 5:46:57 PM PDT
by alloysteel
(Most people slog through life without ever knowing the wonders of true insanity.)
To: delta7
Jupiter has 30 Earth masses worth of Helium. The Sun has much more . The Sun ejects some out into the Solar system all the time. If we had industries in Space Helium is the one item we’d never run out of.
9
posted on 06/22/2024 5:50:08 PM PDT
by Nateman
(Democrats did not strive for fraud friendly voting merely to continue honest elections.)
To: delta7
When you see the Zeepers simply DISCOUNTING as fake, factual articles on the idiocy of the Biden Administration (which, I guess they support, or they wouldn’t be discounting this stuff), then it becomes easier to see why the Neocons are getting SPANKED in Ukraine.
10
posted on 06/22/2024 6:06:56 PM PDT
by BobL
To: delta7
11
posted on 06/22/2024 6:18:24 PM PDT
by Chad C. Mulligan
(Your insults are my rocket fuel. More please!)
To: Beowulf9
Alving and The Chipmunks. Mickey Mouse is evil.
12
posted on 06/22/2024 6:18:44 PM PDT
by xoxox
To: Beowulf9
13
posted on 06/22/2024 6:21:35 PM PDT
by xoxox
To: delta7
14
posted on 06/22/2024 6:45:21 PM PDT
by ansel12
((NATO warrior under Reagan, and RA under Nixon, bemoaning the pro-Russians from Vietnam to Ukraine.))
To: delta7
and threatening US helium producers with the destruction of their price and profitability.
The Tater and his puppeteers with yet another smooth economic move…
15
posted on 06/22/2024 6:46:13 PM PDT
by kiryandil
(FR Democrat Party operatives! Rally in defense of your Colombian cartel stooge Merchan!)
To: delta7
No, your thread’s title
isn’t
any more deserving of attention that anybody else’s.
16
posted on 06/22/2024 7:03:10 PM PDT
by Paal Gulli
To: jacknhoo
(Biden is not running the show, but he is certainly conspiring to destroy our nation)
🔝🔝🔝
Excellent way to put it.
That’s EXACTLY what is going on.
17
posted on 06/22/2024 7:04:41 PM PDT
by SaveFerris
(Luke 17:28 … as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ……)
To: BobL
18
posted on 06/22/2024 7:06:19 PM PDT
by SaveFerris
(Luke 17:28 … as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold ……)
To: delta7
is to generate about 75 million cubic litres annually
Cubic litres? Is this some type of ninth dimension hyper-helium?
19
posted on 06/22/2024 7:13:33 PM PDT
by KarlInOhio
(Democrats’ version of MAGA: Making America the Gulag Archipelago. Now with “Formal Deprogramming”)
To: Nateman
The sun is creating helium all the time through fusion of its hydrogen into helium. It will probably run out in 5-10 billion years.
20
posted on 06/22/2024 7:58:00 PM PDT
by glorgau
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