The increasingly prolonged disruption to helium supplies flowing through the Strait of Hormuz risks triggering sporadic shortages and rationing by July, potentially disrupting parts of Asia's semiconductor industry and affecting supplies to others, such as automakers and certain electronics manufacturers. The helium industry has been burning through inventories since the Feb. 28 U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran led to Iranian retaliation across the Gulf, shuttering Qatar's helium exports that, prior to the war, accounted for 33% of the global supply that undergirds a range of key industries. While Iran and the United States maintain a fragile ceasefire and are attempting to negotiate an end to the war that would pave the way for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, talks have floundered in recent days after U.S. President Donald Trump called Iran's latest response to a deal "a piece of garbage." As a result, it could still take weeks or months for shipping through the strait to near prewar levels. Additionally, Qatar would have to bring its large liquefied natural gas export terminals back online — a process that could take one to two months — before helium exports could resume, as helium is produced as a byproduct of natural gas processing, and Qatar will be cautious about doing so while regional tensions remain high. Once helium exports do resume, it will take weeks for supplies to reach helium distributors and final consumers.

• There are a limited number of significant helium suppliers globally. In addition to Qatar, other leading producers in 2025 were the United States (43%), Russia (10%) and Algeria (6%). The rest of the world accounts for less than 10% of global supply. Advanced semiconductor manufacturing using deep ultraviolet and extreme ultraviolet lithography processes requires 5.5N (99.9995% purity) or 6N (99.9999% purity) helium, a grade available from only a few producers — including Qatar.
• Helium is difficult or even impossible to replace in many use cases. Not only is it an inert gas, meaning it will not undergo a chemical reaction with other substances, but it also has the lowest boiling point of any element, making it essential in any industrial applications for achieving superconductivity and removing excess heat. 
• There are seven main areas where helium is used: in labs and sciences, as a specialty or cryogenic gas, in the semiconductor and other electronics industries, in MRI machines in the healthcare industry, as a lifting gas, for welding and in the aerospace industry.

While the helium industry has been able to absorb the disruption to Qatari gas supplies during the first two months of the crisis, buffers in the supply chain will likely wear thin over the next few months. There is little public reporting on the amount of helium countries or companies have stockpiled, but the general consensus is that some distributors may face more significant shortages if traffic disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz persist through June. South Korean chipmakers, which are crucial to memory chip production, and their suppliers reportedly had enough helium to last four to six months at the start of the conflict. Based on the same starting period, TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, reportedly held an inventory of around three to six months. These chipmakers are some of the most advanced, and they use — and recycle — the most helium. Smaller chipmakers that use older technologies, recover less helium during fabrication and have more limited financial resources likely have smaller inventories, both on hand and potentially at distributors. While it is almost certain that companies in places most dependent on Qatari helium — India, China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and South Korea — have sought to secure additional supplies from other sources, the helium supply chain is relatively rigid due to the difficult, specialized nature of transporting helium, which can take months. Over long distances, helium must be transported in 40-foot cryogenic ISO containers uniquely designed to accommodate helium's low boiling point and high pressure. However, even these specially designed containers cannot contain helium indefinitely. Due to boil-off — a process by which some of the liquid helium converts to gas and is lost — the containers are primarily designed to ship helium to destinations within six weeks, or about 45 days, before pressure inside the container is high enough that some gas must be vented. As a result, long-range transits (i.e., shipping from the United States to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope or the Suez Canal) are difficult, making the shorter route via the Strait of Hormuz important to Asian customers. Moreover, this phenomenon means the roughly 200 containers in Qatar that were filled with helium prior to the war are now well past their 45-day period, effectively rendering them a significantly degraded product. 

• Iranian attacks in March targeting Qatar's Ras Laffan gas industrial complex will knock off some of Qatar's helium production capacity for several years. Qatari officials estimate that it will take three to five years to rebuild two liquefaction trains that were damaged, which will reduce Qatar's helium production by 14% — equivalent to about 5% of the global supply — even if the rest of the facility resumes operations. 
• Using each country's customs trade data, by value in 2025, Taiwan imported 88% of its rare gases other than argon (a Harmonized System code category that is primarily helium, but also includes neon, krypton and xenon that some countries do not split into more detailed codes) from Qatar. China imported 61% of its rare gases other than argon from Qatar. South Korea imported 65% of its helium from Qatar. Japan imported 35% of its helium from Qatar. Germany, Europe's largest chipmaker, imported 50.6% of its helium from Qatar. 

Helium shipments from Qatar are unlikely to resume until July, at the earliest, and a longer disruption is becoming increasingly likely. In an unlikely, best-case scenario, the United States and Iran could strike a deal in the coming days to enter talks and fully de-escalate their conflict over the next month via a durable agreement that allows shipping to resume through the Strait of Hormuz. However, even in this scenario, initial shipments through the Strait of Hormuz would likely be limited to risk-tolerant ships or those willing to pay Iran a fee and hope they are not attacked by the U.S. Navy. Despite two Qatari LNG shipments transiting the strait to reach Pakistan in May, Qatar is unlikely to pay Iran a fee for all its shipments and will likely be risk-averse regarding a full resumption of its liquefaction facilities; Doha will likely wait until it is confident it will not need to halt liquefaction trains quickly after resuming, given the month-long cool-down period required before LNG is produced. This means that even in a best-case scenario, Qatari helium production is unlikely to resume at large volumes until mid-July, and shipments from Qatar would be unlikely to reach their final destination before August. If U.S.-Iran negotiations drag on or break down, which is increasingly likely amid structural disagreements and ongoing military operations, the timeline for Qatari helium reaching markets would be pushed further back. 

A Qatari helium supply disruption that lasts through July or August would exhaust initial buffers, forcing distributors to prioritize certain clients amid supply shortfalls. As there is no way to quickly expand helium supply, prolonged disruptions to shipments through the Strait of Hormuz will increasingly result in rationing. This will initially lead to a decline in supplies for lifting gas customers for party balloons, nonessential research and development labs at universities, and even welding. But even when excluding these less-essential sectors, demand from chipmakers, electronics companies, the healthcare sector and aerospace companies would more or less consume all of the leftover gas supplies, making shortages possible, particularly in less industrially advanced countries where helium and industrial supply chains are less efficient. Most governments and companies will prioritize helium gas for national security applications (i.e., rocket propulsion systems) and for hospitals and the healthcare system. While semiconductor and even rocket industries can afford higher helium prices, hospital systems, especially smaller or rural systems that run much lower margins, could be forced to install fewer new MRI scanners and ration the use of existing machines to avoid severe financial distress. Governments will also prioritize semiconductor fabrication, but the industry's large size suggests that some chipmakers may need to ration helium by reducing throughput and yields due to supply concerns or lower-than-anticipated deliveries. 

• Already, some gas distributors have been rationing or curbing helium shipments to their customers. For example, in March, Airgas, one of the largest distributors of helium gas in the United States, declared a force majeure event, stating that it would provide some of its customers with up to half of their usual monthly helium supply. Airgas reportedly was prioritizing deliveries to the healthcare sector for MRIs over other industries, a common practice during helium shortages. 

In the semiconductor industry, smaller Asian chipmakers are the most vulnerable to helium supply disruptions, which would affect memory chips, contract chips and more mature technology, hurting appliance makers, automakers and even some electronics sectors using older technology in tandem with cutting-edge chips. High-end, large-volume chipmakers using DUV and EUV lithography machines, like TSMC and Samsung, are far more dependent on helium in the production process than chipmakers using older technologies, but because of this, they have invested in recycling the helium they use, with recovery rates reaching 80%-90%, which actually enables them to manufacture more chips with less helium than other chipmakers. Additionally, these high-end, large-volume chipmakers are prized anchor clients of process gas suppliers, making them more likely to receive their orders than smaller companies that account for a smaller share of suppliers' revenue. By contrast, Chinese companies, Southeast Asian companies and South Asian companies, as well as some Taiwanese companies besides TSMC, are all heavily reliant on imports from Qatar, often use less efficient technology and are unlikely to have buffers in place comparable to those of major players in the industry. Many governments of countries at risk of shortages will seek to optimize supply allocation, but their chipmakers will nevertheless remain the most at risk of delayed or reduced helium shipments, which would disrupt the production of analog chips, mature-node logic chips and standardized memory chips, among others. These disruptions would put more upward pressure on prices and could lead to knock-on effects for industries that frequently use such chips, such as automotives, basic household appliances and Internet of Things devices. Additionally, disruptions to memory chip production could worsen the ongoing shortage that began in 2025, further raising prices and reducing the availability of memory chip-containing devices like many PCs, tablets and smartphones.