The war against Iran continues and it does not seem that it will be as surgical and rapid as its promoters promised: the United States and Israel. The personal victims (especially in Iran) already number in the thousands, the economic damage is incalculable, the risk of the conflict escalating is high and the consequences and scope are still unpredictable in an area of the Middle East that has been converted into a tinderbox for decades.
The situation concerns everything and everyonefrom global geopolitical relations to the consumer who stops by the service station to refuel or shop at the supermarket. Technology is not left out either, as we saw in this special where we talked about HBM memory, AI, the Achilles’ heel of the Strait of Hormuz and, in general, the global supply of semiconductors.
The war against Iran, Helium and other materials to make chips
Asian chip production media is warning of another problem that may affect the global supply chain, as the war against Iran is disrupting the flow of essential industrial materials from the Middle East.
One of the materials at risk is helioessential in chip production to control heat, detect leaks and maintain stable temperatures in manufacturing equipment. For many of these uses, there is no real substitute. About 38% of the world’s helium is produced in Qatar, where large extraction facilities are linked to the natural gas industry. This concentration means that disruptions can spread quickly through the global supply chain.
The national oil company QatarEnergy declared force majeure on March 4, after stopping its gas production and operations downstream (crude refining, fuel and petrochemical production) due to Iran’s attacks on US interests in response to the attacks received. These facilities transform the gas into other products, such as urea, polymers, methanol and aluminum.
South Korea’s Ministry of Industry stated that the country also depends on the Middle East for 14 other chip manufacturing materialssuch as bromine and some chip inspection equipment. Although some of these materials can be sourced domestically or in other markets, switching suppliers in the semiconductor industry is difficult because chipmakers need to test and validate new sources to meet the strict purity standards required in manufacturing clean rooms.
The big manufacturers, TSMC, GlobalFoundry and Samsung, talk about a “manageable situation” for nowalthough they have already had to implement mitigation plans. Even if gas production resumes in Qatar, the semiconductor industry is vulnerable to disruptions to regional shipping routes. Much of the world’s exports of energy and petrochemical products from the Persian Gulf pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a key maritime point whose bottleneck has already caused Price increases for barrels of oil and energy. If the conflict spreads, the situation can be very serious.
The war against Iran is another major problem that occurs when semiconductor supply chains are already stretched to the limit due to the growing demand for AI computing, which at the same time threatens to cause a reversal of the technological market, for the customer, commercial and also industrial segment, with supply problems in the automotive sector.
