A Different Kind Of Inflation Problem

The world’s helium stores are running low. Prices are soaring, and it’s not just party balloons at risk of going unfilled. Two geologists say they’ve stumbled on a supply that could transform a whole country.

- Paul Tullis

If Josh Bluett and his pal Thomas Abraham-James hadn’t run out of things to talk about during a road trip, they might never have read the six pages that changed their lives. Bluett and Abraham-James are Australian geologists and onetime housemates in Brisbane who’d been hunting precious metals and fossil fuels for mining and energy companies. By November 2013, Abraham-James was living in Tanzania, looking for gold and copper, and he invited Bluett for a visit. “I was having a great time—this was proper exploration,” AbrahamJames recalls. “I told him, ‘You’ve got to come experience this place.’

”During the long drive from the city of Dar es Salaam to one of the sites where Abraham-James’s company was prospecting for gold, Bluett found in the back of the car a government published book, Industrial Minerals in Tanzania: An Investor’s Guide. Inside were summaries of old reports identifying deposits around the country, and some numbers concerning helium caught Bluett’s eye. While conducting geological analyses for his employer a couple of years earlier, he’d gained some experience spotting caches of the universe’s second-most abundant element, which has lately been in short supply here on Earth.