“An even more serious situation has arisen for helium which had already been in short supply. A strike broke out on November 27 at the Long Beach Port in Los Angeles. This cause a halt to operations at the port and there has been a clogging up of work on shipments of helium. The US is the largest exporter of helium for Japan. As of December 6, containers set to be exported on December 2 have not left the port, and it is feared that containers for export to Japan for the Christmas week of December 24 will be not arrive in time. Along with this, the situation is such that empty containers being returned from Japan cannot enter the port. It appears that there will be disruption in the turnaround of containers later on.

Japanese suppliers, while gathering information on the spot over there, have been discussing means of coping with the situation by exporting containers from other ports. This has bogged down, however, due to a wealth of bookings at all of the other ports. The demand will tend to fall anyway since the containers would arrive in Japan over the New Years holiday lasting about a week starting at the end of December. However the situation is such that there is practically nothing in stock for distribution, so that there will be a pressing need for further restriction in supply.

With the stoppage of the export activities at the US West Coast ports it is predicted that not just helium, but exports of cars and food products, as well as of energy resources will also be affected. Japan is dependant on imports for all of its helium, a rare natural gas resource, so procurement could risk running into real trouble could develop depending on what is going on in the exporting countries. So far there were incidents that procurement of helium became difficult. In 2002, work on exports clogged up with the lockout by dockside workers on the US West Coast．In 2007 a breakdown of the BLM pipeline occurred at the same time as a breakdown of the Exxon Mobil refinery. This lead to a situation whereby the suppliers had to impose restrictions on supply. In all cases, supply in Japan was affected. Now, in view of what happened in 2002 and 2007, together with the disruption in the production plants which occurred in the summer, the current port strike speaks eloquently of the seriousness of the situation Japan faces regarding its supply of helium.”