Phil Kornbluth

The U.S.

has plenty of its own natural gas.

We're a net exporter.

But with global prices rising, you'd expect producers to try to export more, reducing the supply at home, says Ken Medlock, who directs the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University.

Natural gas has to be liquefied before it's loaded onto ships for transport, and the facilities in the U.S.

that do that are maxed out.

He says it would take years of investment to expand export infrastructure, and even then domestic prices for data center energy would likely remain low.

Ira Joseph at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia says our gas surplus could end up supercharging demand for U.S.

data centers even more.

But there's a byproduct of natural gas production that could affect AI, at least in the short term.

Helium.

Yeah, the gas you fill balloons with.

Phil Kornbluth is a helium industry consultant.

Chips are also the single largest budget item for AI data centers, and the plants that manufacture them in South Korea and Taiwan get most of their helium from the Middle East.

Kornblas says helium doesn't contribute much to the overall cost of semiconductors, but a lengthy disruption could leave supplies a little light.

I'm Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace.

I can understand why it sounded like such a great addition to the county.