Helium: Trading

Take-or-pay contracts and a few industrial-gas giants

Helium has no exchange contract. It is sold under long-term contracts, often take-or-pay, from gas producers to a few industrial-gas companies that own the purification, liquefaction and container fleets. These distributors then sell to hospitals, fabs and labs on contract. For decades sales from the US Federal Helium Reserve near Amarillo acted as a reference price. That reserve has since been sold, and MCS lists no government stockpile. Price discovery is now private and patchy.

Where it is bought (buyers)

• Industrial gas companies buy crude or liquid helium from gas and LNG producers on long-term, often take-or-pay, contracts
• Hospitals, chip fabs, fibre plants and universities buy liquid or gas from distributors on supply contracts
• Importers in China, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, France and Germany take the largest shares of traded value (Comtrade 2024)

Where it is sold (sellers)

• Qatar (Ras Laffan) and Algeria from LNG plants
• US producers in Wyoming, Kansas, Texas and new wells in New Mexico, Colorado and Montana
• Russia's Amur plant, barred from EU and US markets
• Canada and South Africa from new plants

Exchanges and benchmarks

Contract types

• Long-term take-or-pay supply contracts between producers and gas majors
• Multi-year distribution contracts with hospitals and fabs
• Spot or short-term liquid sales in surplus periods
• Historically, BLM auctions and in-kind sales from the federal reserve (ended with the 2024 sale)

Top trading houses

• Linde
• Air Products
• Air Liquide
• Messer
• Iwatani (Japan)

How prices are discovered

• No published benchmark; USGS estimates an annual Grade-A base price
• Consultants such as Kornbluth Helium Consulting track contract prices and shortages
• End-user surveys and university purchasing data