While formerly most of the helium production technologies were in the United States, additional producing countries slowly appeared, and Qatar, Canada, Algeria and Russia are producers of the gas.Nuttall, W. J., Clarke, R., Glowacki, B., (2012). “The Future of Helium as a Natural Resource”, Routledge. In 2015, this new production resulted in a surplus of supply over demand. The United States, which has historically been an exporter of helium, will soon become an importer for the first time in its history. Since 2013 the world's largest helium hub is no longer located in the United States of America but in Qatar, which produces 1.3 billion cubic feet of helium per year from a single project and meets 25% of the global demand. One challenge related to bringing new helium sources onto the market is that it usually requires venture capital financing. Another challenge is that the current selling price of U.S. Cliffside helium is too low to encourage more new producers to enter the field.
