The gas Australia forgot: helium squeeze that threatens hospitals and hi-tech industry
THE AUSTRALIAN – 30 MARCH 2026
Australia is staring down a growing helium squeeze despite sitting on vast reserves of the gas it comes from, leaving hospitals, chipmakers, fibre optic manufacturers and research labs at the mercy of global markets.
Helium, a by-product of natural gas, is in increasingly tight supply worldwide. Yet for all its LNG muscle, Australia has almost none of its own.
While politicians obsess over petrol prices and fuel security, helium has quietly slipped through the cracks despite it underpinning critical services across healthcare, advanced manufacturing and science. The stakes are high: there are few substitutes, and when supply tightens, access is rationed.
That pressure is now building. Disruptions to major suppliers, including in the Middle East, have tightened global markets, exposing just how vulnerable import-reliant countries like Australia have become. The impact is largely invisible but the system is designed to prioritise, and not everyone makes the cut.
Helium is a critical enabler of the modern economy. It cools superconducting magnets inside MRI machines to near absolute zero, making high-resolution medical imaging possible. It is also indispensable in chipmaking, where ultra-clean, inert conditions are required, and in fibre optic production and advanced research. When supply runs short, it’s not just prices that rise – volumes are allocated, and lower-priority users are pushed aside.
Australia’s exposure is the result of a structural blind spot. The country’s last meaningful domestic supply, tied to LNG production in Darwin, dried up in 2023 when the Bayu-Undan field was depleted. Since then, every molecule has been imported, largely via global heavyweights Linde and Air Liquide.
Those companies draw from a handful of global hubs, particularly Qatar and the US, and funnel supply to markets based on priority. When disruptions hit – whether geopolitical or operational – the squeeze is passed down the chain.
Woodside Energy’s then interim chief executive Liz Westcott, who has since been appointed the company’s full-time leader, said the company did not see the product as economically viable for its Australian operations but that could change if a project in Timor-Leste was to proceed.
“When we think about out core products, we have crude and LNG, things that are very important to us. They have deep markets and they are playing to our competitive advantage, which both of those do with our operational capabilities,” Ms Westcott told investors earlier this month.
“When we look at new products to add, whether that is lower carbon or helium, we do look to make sure there are strong markets. The helium market really is quite small. It is quite lucrative but its quite small. So it wouldn’t be a material product for us.”
In practice, hospitals are shielded, thanks to long-term contracts reflecting helium’s essential role in medical imaging, but universities, manufacturers and smaller industrial users – including those in electronics and research – are left exposed to shortages and price spikes. Retail uses, like party balloons, are typically the first to be cut.
The deeper irony is hard to miss. Helium is typically found alongside natural gas, a commodity Australia exports in enormous volumes. In places like the US and Qatar, producers have invested in capturing helium as part of LNG processing.
Australia hasn’t. Most local gas fields have low helium concentrations, and major LNG plants weren’t built to extract it. Retrofitting is costly and complex, and new projects would need to bake helium recovery in from the outset.
The result:
even the country’s biggest gas exporters aren’t producing meaningful volumes. Woodside Energy, operator of some of Australia’s flagship LNG projects, produces little to no helium at scale. Rivals such as Santos are in much the same position.
There are early moves to tap helium-rich resources in central Australia but any meaningful supply is years away. For now, the country is hooked on a tightly controlled global market for a gas that underpins everything from hospital diagnostics to the electronics supply chain.
For policymakers focused on supply chain resilience, helium is an invisible vulnerability hiding in plain sight. Unlike oil or gas, it is scarce, geographically concentrated and once it escapes into the atmosphere, gone for good.