You can 'store it', but it leaks over time. If you were to buy 10 billion cubic metres of helium today as a hedge on prices rising in 10 years, you may well re

You can 'store it', but it leaks over time. If you were to buy 10 billion cubic metres of helium today as a hedge on prices rising in 10 years, you may well return to find that you have significantly less in 10 years time. The ways it's 'stored' are a) in large [very] deep caves, which is the sort of investment an individual cannot generally make as you don't own your property to the centre of the earth. b) in cryogenic thick walled tanks with the understanding that you will lose helium constantly, but are able to replace it with new helium. This requires a 'constant' resupply of helium, plus energy expenditure in the form of keeping it cryogenically chilled. This isn't a 'long term' storage plan, and assumes that helium prices stay low. c) by extracting it from the ground - this is how we get helium on earth as it is, we find it in pockets alongside natural gas at reasonably great depths. This is essentially tapping into the planet's own version of method 'a'. Method 'a' is the only real 'long term storage' we can do, and even then it leaks as long as there is some method to remove it again from the storage.