Technology

So the cost aspect is absolutely massive. You can theoretically filter elemental gold out of sea water, but it's not reasonable to do that to supply gold for use in electronics. Similarly you can purify helium as much as you want but at a certain point the cost makes whatever you were doing with it prohibitively expensive.

Right now we're still pulling helium out of the ground alongside natural gas deposits. We're also not doing everything we can to recover, recycle, or substitute the industrial and scientific grade stuff either.

As less helium gets extracted the cost will go up. This will put market pressure on all users to use it more efficiently or find substitutes wherever possible. If the price goes high enough it might also drive producers to purify helium that might have been sold at a lower grade in the past.

This find in Minnesota pushes that future scenario down the road a bit, which can either extend the status quo or buy time for technological improvements to be made that will make use and extraction more efficient.