Helium shortage and Walmart

[DandyDon]

As far as why Helium is scarce & expensive, the US Government had stockpiled it, then decided they couldn't afford the reserve so sold it off. There are new plants, but they won't sell it as cheap as the liquidation prices.

From Helium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

By 1995, a billion cubic meters of the gas had been collected and the reserve was US$1.4 billion in debt, prompting the Congress of the United States in 1996 to phase out the reserve.^[4][28] The resulting "Helium Privatization Act of 1996"^[29] (Public Law 104–273) directed the United States Department of the Interior to start emptying the reserve by 2005