The market has been distorted since ~1996 by the federal decision to sell off the National Helium Reserve. That said, the "we're running out of helium" scare s

The market has been distorted since ~1996 by the federal decision to sell off the National Helium Reserve. That said, the "we're running out of helium" scare stories are misleading. The reason no one has looked for it directly (instead of as a side product to natural gas) is that it's been too cheap to make that profitable. Medical helium is an inelastic good, so discovery will increase as prices rise. Like the difference between "proven reserves" and the amount of oil actually in the ground, we are "running out" of helium only for the discovered-and-exploited version of helium.