Ann: Mereenie Helium Recovery Unit MOU, page-12

Two reasons spring to mind.

1) The helium price has traditionally been around $70/Mcf, the last few years there has been a step change to around $200/Mcf and it's likely this will be the new normal.

2) Australia previously had a domestic helium industry with gas from Blacktip which could likely easily out-compete a small helium plant like CTP is proposing. That production is going to stop so soon there will be no domestic helium production, and nobody who can undercut CTP as any supplies will be linked to the global helium price since it all needs to be imported.

Helium is very expensive to extract and transport and I suspect the margins weren't there previously. Now the situation has changed.