This small glass object may be worth far more than you think.
On Tuesday evening, at a FRNIX event in Lille, the company Prysmian presented a preform (that is its nickname). This glass cylinder of about forty kilos will produce up to 1,000 km of optical fibre.
What does it take to make one? Helium and rare gases, all heated to nearly 2,000°C in towers 20 metres high.
And that is where it becomes geopolitical.
Currently, helium is produced mainly in the United States, Algeria and Qatar.
Except that in the current context (Iranian strikes, the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz…), several problems are surfacing:
- the Ras Laffan complex in Qatar (the world’s largest LNG and by-product export facility) has been hit;
- QatarEnergy has suspended production and declared force majeure.
Yet helium is extracted as a by-product of natural gas processing. No LNG = no helium. To give a sense of scale, in 2024 Qatar supplied 1/3 of the world’s helium.
According to forecasts, the closure of the strait could remove around a quarter of the world’s helium from the market.
And helium is not just used to make fibre and inflate balloons.
It is a critical material for:
- semiconductors (wafer etching, lithography);
- MRI and medical imaging;
- aerospace.
Russia could theoretically make up part of the production. But do we really want to fund those against whom we are already funding a defence?
The digital transition has geopolitical dependencies that we still greatly underestimate.
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