re: There is a world wide helium shortage and we may need to ban party balloons

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I’m sure someone said it already, but how is helium even produced?

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You take a gas stream that contains helium and you chill the frick out of it under high pressure. Helium has the lowest boiling point of any gas, so the other gases condense into liquids and can be removed while the helium remains gaseous. That's why it's so expensive. You've got to squeeze a lot of gas and get it down to a few hundred degrees below zero to condense everything else out to concentrate the helium and that takes a LOT of energy.

After most of the other gases are condensed out, then you can use various scrubbing methods to get rid of the remaining traces of contaminants.