Helium shortage kills balloon industry?

As florists in Canada, we are having trouble getting helium to fill balloons.

Apparently there is a worldwide shortage.

With a limited supply, medical requirements are taking priority.

You see, liquid helium is used to cool MRI scanners. Clinical trials rely on helium as well. It is dispensed into the lungs and tracked on a monitor, allowing researchers to directly measure the impact of different treatments for the first time.

Which means that helium isn't available to florists or party planners for balloons.

So what happened?

Until recently, helium was easy to get a hold of.

Helium is a by-product of drilling for natural gas. Once the drill hits the gas field, the top layer in the field is helium with the natural gas lying below.

It was easy to extract the helium first, and then suck out the natural gas.

But the old ways of natural gas extraction have virtually come to an end.

The new way of natural gas extraction is fracking. It's the technique which involves the injection of millions of litres of water and thousands of litres of unidentified chemicals underground at very high pressure. This process creates fractures in the underlying shale rock formations and they can then extract the natural gas below the surface. 

But using this process dissipates the helium.

It can no longer be captured.

We have to rely on previously extracted helium which is currently stored in underground caverns.

And that supply is limited.

Unless things change, the death of the balloon industry may be coming soon.

And that wouldn't be fun at all...