Okay, Chelsea, I had an article. I just need to find it really quick. Where did I put it?
Is it going to be good news today?
No.
Oh no.
This one comes from NBC News. It is written by Caroline Hopkins on January 25th, 2024.
Title, the US just sold its helium stockpile. Here's why medical world is worried.
On Thursday, the US government sold the Federal Helium Reserve, a massive underground stockpile
based in Amarillo, Texas that supplies up to 30% of the country's helium. Once the deal is finalized,
the buyer, which will likely be the highest bidder, the industrial gas company Messer,
will claim some 425 miles of pipeline spanning Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma, plus about 1 billion
cubic feet of the only element on earth that cold enough to make an MRI machine work.
The regulatory and logistical issue with the facility threatened a temporary shutdown as it
passes from public to private ownership, and hospital supply chain experts worry the sale
could have serious consequences for healthcare down the road, especially when it comes to MRIs.
To be sure, a Federal Helium Reserve shutdown wouldn't mean that MRIs would suddenly power down
across the country, said Sumi Saha, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Premier Inc.,
which contracts with helium suppliers on behalf of 4,400 hospitals in the US.
But we are stressing about this shortage from a healthcare perspective. MRI machines are the
number one concern. American patients undergo an estimated 40 million MRI scans each year to help
diagnose cancer, brain and spinal cord injuries, strokes and heart conditions. The superconductive
magnet-powered imaging machines give doctors clear high-resolution images of areas inside the body
they can't see on X-ray and CT scans. But without liquid helium, the Earth's coldest element,
MRI machines can't keep their magnets cold enough to generate these images.
The sale of the government stockpile of the non-renewable element could exacerbate an existing
supply shortage, Saha said. A number of factors could trigger a shutdown of the facility that
could last as long as three years, said Rich Gottwold, CEO of the Compressed Gas Association.
A trade group that represents companies including Messer that buy up helium and sell it to hospitals,
semiconductor manufacturers, NASA and other customers. The facility spans three states,
each of which has its own laws. The federal government didn't need to reconcile state-specific
rules but a private buyer would, he said. Another issue is that helium must be enriched before it
can be used and a separate system is needed to do that. That enrichment system isn't part of
Federal Reserve, but it is privately owned by four private companies including Messer. Unlike the
pipeline in helium itself, it wasn't for sale. A new owner will need to create some sort of lease
to use the enrichment unit or build their own unit to enrich helium, Gottwold said. There's a whole
host of issues that need to be resolved and the concern is until they are resolved the system
will need to be shut down. In a letter in October urging the White House to delay the sale, the CGA
and four other trade associations laid out what they see as the most critical issues at the facility.
Two of the trade associations behind the letter, ADVA-MEDD and the Medical Imaging and Technology
Alliance represent MRI manufacturers. Quote, timely critical patient care would suffer if
helium supply is constricted further. ADVA-MEDD urges the White House to delay the sale and
privatization of the Federal Helium Reserve until outstanding issues identified by the
Compressed Gas Association are resolved. End quote. Said Scott Whitaker, ADVA-MEDD CEO.
The sale has been in the works for more than a decade. Congress first mandated it through the
Helium Stewardship Act and it was initially supposed to occur in 2021 but a series of delays in part
due to the same logistical and regulatory issues threatening shutdowns today postponed the auction
to Thursday. That's probably a good place to end. There is more to the article if you wish to read
more like by all means. It's an interesting topic and if your only real intentional interaction with
helium is in balloons you would not realize that there's actually a whole world behind that which
could go away in a very short time span that is medical technology that uses helium.
Yeah, do you think the private buyer is something to do with balloons?
Um, no. And in fact, it's the subsidization of helium that allows us to use it for balloons.
If it was actually like free market prices, we wouldn't be able to use helium in balloons because
it would be like 80 dollars per balloon. We wouldn't be buying that if it was 80 dollars per balloon.
But helium is nice to have on balloons. They, yeah, quote. Our breath doesn't do that. And that's not
good. I mean, in the end, I feel like money talks more than anything in the United States and that's
dangerous. Yeah. And if there's critical supplies of things that you are stockpiling, it's probably
best that it remains in public hands and not at the whims of a few billionaires who probably own
these companies. Yeah, because they don't give a shit. Yeah, they can do anything. They make money.
Yes. And in fact, there being a dwindling supply means they can make more money. That's true.
And a very annoying thing is if you own a monopoly on a product, you can't. Yeah,
a monopoly or a monopoly depending on what we're looking at there. But yeah, that's a little bit
of depressing news, potentially depressing news, I guess. So it's not, it's not truly bad news.
Yeah, it's just potentially bad and likely bad in the long run. But yeah, 48 hours to think on that
and hopefully get your MRIs if you need them. So anyhow, we'll see you Friday.