Canada’s Helium Boom: How the Country Is Emerging as a Global Supply Powerhouse
With new reserves, government backing, and rising global demand, the Great White North is positioning itself as one of the world’s most reliable helium suppliers.
If you’ve been to a kids’ party, you know the fun you can have with helium. Turns out you can make a lot of money with it too. Beyond its use in colourful balloons and chipmunk impersonations, the lighter-than-air element is also useful for making high-tech gadgetry, including medical imaging equipment, semiconductors, fibre optic cables, satellites and rockets, nuclear power plants, and more.
All of which presents a bit of a problem. The age-old rationale for investing in land applies equally well to helium: they’re not making any more of it. In fact, the vast majority of the helium that will ever be found on Earth has already been here for millions (or even billions) of years, the product of the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium deep underground. With world demand projected to double within 10 years, many nations are tightening export controls and encouraging prospectors to find as much of it as they can.
Easier said than done. While helium may be the second-most abundant element in the universe, getting your hands on it is a tricky business. A typical reservoir is over two kilometres deep; extraordinary ones can exceed seven. Most don’t have high enough concentrations to make wells economically viable. Even when they do, separating helium from the gases found with it (typically nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and methane) takes specialized facilities and considerable know-how.
Calgary-based North American Helium plans to overcome such problems. The company is just one of a dozen or so homegrown startups digging around for their share of Canada’s estimated 70 billion cubic feet of reserves, the fifth largest in the world. Using much of the same drilling technology and engineering expertise that was developed in oil-rich Alberta, the company has dug more than 100 helium wells in Saskatchewan, producing more than 210 million cubic feet a year. It has also invested over $500 million to build a network of pipelines and processing facilities in the hope of selling the province’s nitrogen-rich helium reservoirs as a cleaner, greener alternative to the helium commonly sourced from natural gas fields.
The timing could not be better. As economic ties unravel in the face of trade tensions, it’s become obvious that Canada’s economy will need to be much more resilient and independent than ever before. Finding a way to supply ourselves with helium and other critical inputs that fuel high-tech innovation would be a good first step. After that—sky’s the limit.
