James Dugan
24.4K posts
@Christo7884249
Catholic. Husband, father, grandfather. Austin, TX. Deus Vult. No DM's please. No Porn.DMs=Block
NOW - Netanyahu: "Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good."
SCOOP: The Pentagon asked the White House today for more than *$200 billion* for the Iran war supplemental, sources say Some White House aides think Congress won't support b/c it's so big Will tee up giant battle in Congress
Japanese Report: "Why didn't you tell US allies about the war before attacking Iran?" Donald Trump: "Who knows better about surprises then Japan. Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?" This man belong in a psychiatric ward.
NOW - Netanyahu: "Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan. Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good."
An Israeli airstrike struck an apartment building in central Beirut, on Wednesday. The Israeli army had warned residents to evacuate about an hour before completely flattening it as day broke.
Shell's Pearl GTL facility in Qatar stops production after attacks reut.rs/40HzVdT reut.rs/40HzVdT
Helium is the only element that escapes Earth’s atmosphere permanently. Once released, it rises through the troposphere, passes the stratosphere, and leaves the planet. It cannot be manufactured. It cannot be synthesised at industrial scale. It accumulates over billions of years in the same geological reservoirs as natural gas. And one third of the world’s supply just went offline because Iran hit the facility that extracts it. Qatar produced roughly 63 million cubic metres of helium in 2025, accounting for 30 to 36 percent of global supply from a total of approximately 190 million cubic metres. QatarEnergy’s three large helium purification plants at Ras Laffan form the world’s biggest helium production base. When LNG production stopped after Iranian drone strikes on March 2 and the subsequent missile damage on March 19, helium extraction stopped automatically because helium is recovered during natural gas liquefaction. You cannot produce helium without producing LNG. The byproduct dies with the primary product. Spot helium prices have roughly doubled since the crisis began. Industry consultants warn that prolonged disruption could push contract prices toward $2,000 per thousand cubic feet. A major industrial gas supplier has already begun assessing customers a helium surcharge. Phil Kornbluth, the most cited helium market consultant, stated the assessment directly: the world cannot compensate for the loss of a third of its helium supply. South Korea imports 64.7 percent of its helium from Qatar. SK Hynix and Samsung operate high-volume fabs producing the DRAM and high-bandwidth memory that power every AI accelerator, every data centre GPU, and every cloud computing cluster on Earth. Helium cools silicon wafers during fabrication. It serves as a carrier gas in deposition and etching tools. It enables leak detection in vacuum systems. Modern extreme ultraviolet lithography requires helium-cooled environments for precise temperature control. Without helium, the fabrication process degrades or stops. SK Hynix and Samsung hold two to three months of helium inventory. Two to three months is not a buffer. It is a countdown. If Ras Laffan remains offline beyond that window, South Korean memory production faces rationing. TSMC in Taiwan is somewhat more diversified but still uses Qatar-linked supply chains. The entire AI hardware supply chain, from HBM3E memory stacks to advanced logic chips, sits inside helium-dependent ecosystems. Beyond semiconductors, helium cools the superconducting magnets in more than 14,000 MRI machines operating worldwide. It pressurises rocket fuel tanks and purges propulsion systems in aerospace. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider depends on helium cryogenic systems. There is no substitute for helium in any of these applications at industrial scale. The United States and Qatar together account for more than 70 percent of global production. The US federal helium reserve and private suppliers offer partial relief, but global prices and spot availability are still governed by Qatar’s market share. Japan’s Iwatani has drawn on US reserves. Canada and the Rockies are seeing renewed investor interest. None of this replaces 63 million cubic metres in weeks. The war hit uranium first. Then oil. Then nitrogen. Then water. Then plastic. Then medicine. Then sulfur. Now helium. Eight layers. Each one deeper. Each one closer to the infrastructure that sustains modern civilisation. The chip that processes your data, the magnet that scans your body, and the rocket that launches your satellite all depend on an atom that leaves the planet when you lose it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
Natural gas traders braced for market turbulence after Qatar reported “extensive damage” to the complex hosting the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility following multiple Iranian strikes bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
