Industry Insight

January 2023 Barry Friedman, Explorer Correspondent

The price of helium has increased more than 250 percent over the past five years, due in part to war, mismanagement and some bad luck and timing.

To put the price in some perspective, helium is 2.5-times more expensive than hydrogen and 100-times more expensive than natural gas.

But even in the best of times, acquiring the gas is a volatile proposition for investors because it’s not only expensive to find and painstaking to refine – it is also non-renewable.

We’re not making any more helium. And we need more of it.

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July 2023 David Brown, Explorer Correspondent

ExxonMobil’s top executive wants his company to double recovery, mainly in the Permian Basin, pinpointing unconventional resources.

Recent trends in the Permian say it won’t be easy. Or cheap.

Darren Woods, Exxon CEO, spoke at the annual Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York City at the beginning of June.

“I think we’ve seen the initial rush of shale and understand that proposition there. I think there’s still a lot of technology to unlock that’s still relatively immature in its development cycle. We’re still only recovering about 10 percent of unconventional resources,” Woods said.

“And so there’s a lot of oil being left in the ground based on industry’s ability to tap into that and recover that oil. That’s actually one of the areas we’re very focused on,” he added.

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