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Well, [1] says they sold it at 3.43 USD per m^3 to non-government customers in 2014, and if they have over a billion m^3, it would require over 3.43 billion USD

Well, [1] says they sold it at 3.43 USD per m^3 to non-government customers in 2014, and if they have over a billion m^3, it would require over 3.43 billion USD to accomplish. In addition to that, they'd then need to have a helium storage facility that could accommodate such an enormous reserve, the construction and maintenance of which might eat all of the profit from resale which might ensue. All of this presuming the government would sell a sole bidder their entire reserve in one fell swoop. [1] - http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/helium/mcs-2015-heliu.pdf http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/helium/mcs-...

eru 10y ago
You could still make money at a larger scale (given a cheap enough storage facility): buy helium now, sell when more expensive. You'd have to wait. If you could buy the whole lot now, you could make the profit straight away. If storing the helium plus interest rates actually costs more than the expected price increase over time warrants----then the US government _should_ sell off the reserve now, and the whole thing about them selling too cheaply is nonsense. Though it might be that the US government can store helium cheaper than anyone else. In that case, perhaps they should sell the helium with the storage facilities? After all, what good are the storage facilities to them, when they've sold all the helium?