South Africa's hidden helium

Everybody knows about South Africa's gold, but now they've discovered something very different – helium.

Helium is the gas in birthday balloons. But it's also required in microchips, in medical equipment and in space technology.

The gas is extremely rare. There are only a few countries with helium.

Gas company Renergen paid $1 for a huge piece of land in South Africa in 2012. The company’s directors, Stefano Marani and Nick Mitchell, were looking for natural gas there. The gas was tested and it contained helium. This was a huge shock.

Stefano Marani: ("What was your reaction when you found out?") - "I can't say that on camera!" [laughter]

Both the quality and amount of helium were very high. It's very unusual to find helium of this kind anywhere in the world.

Stefano Marani: "The United States produces at around 0.35 percent. Our average is 3.4 percent, so already we're, we’re 10 times higher than the United States and that's our average. We have wells over here at 12 percent, which are completely unprecedented and never seen before."

There could be far more helium in South Africa than there is in the US. Renergen's helium could be worth over $100 billion. The directors also say their helium can be removed cleanly and easily when they take out the natural gas.

Marani is excited about the project.

Stefano Marani: "It’s, it’s stimulating from a science, from a chemistry perspective, from a physics perspective, from an engineering perspective. There’s all of these cool things going on. And then overlaid with the physics and the chemistry, you’ve got logistics and you’ve got, you know, the fact that we’re dual-listed on, you know, on, on two stock exchanges. There’s, there’s a lot going on in this project. And there, there are a lot of layers to peel away on it. But it, it’s, it’s a fantastic job, it really is." Weniger anzeigen