The important point doesn't change though. We can tap tons of wells of helium that we didn't tap for natural gas because there was too much helium. The price just has to go up to make that profitable. We're not going to run out of helium any time soon.

Qatar is currently producing about 1/3 of the total helium production from its natural gas production. It could produce more if the price was higher.

Helium in natural gas isn't that rare, it's just that the very low prices we've had for years don't make it economical to extract.

Interesting. He's not shitting about the cost of doing by air separation, though, he may actually be underselling it. I used to work in air separation, and various companies have tried going after the rare gasses, like xenon and helium. You're dealing with so few molecules that keeping the in/out flow in the columns stable is nearly impossible.