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And it'll improve. There was a helium find with absolutely insane natural concentrations in South Africa recently.

>Helium is found within natural gas in concentrations typically up to 1% by volume of the gas released; however, the updated reserve review shows that the latest well drilled in the Virgina project contains a concentration of almost 11%.

https://m.miningweekly.com/article/south-africa-to-become-ei...

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But if this reserve is 6-25 billion cubic feet, that’s probably just a drop in the bucket as annual global production is 15-20 billion cubic feet and US reserves are over 700 billion cubic feet.

If you are discussing US natural gas reserves, PUDs are three orders of magnitude higher at over 700Tcf. Going beyond this, some estimates put unproven unconventional supplies at over 700Tcf in-place in the Anadarko basin alone. Considering we haven’t really been hell bent on hunting for gas in the last decade, the true extent of the supply may be radically larger still.

Helium is abundant; it’s prices simply haven’t ever stayed high enough to warrant wider extraction from the gas supply. The last time we did that we produced the strategic helium reserve which has basically fed our consumption for 60 years!

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