Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy (2008) / Chapter Skim
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3 Availability and Reliability of Supply
3 Availability and Reliability of Supply
Pages 71-108
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From page 71... ...
Technical availability considers the state of technology and knowledge to find, extract, and process the mineral resource. Environmental and social availability includes attributes of the environment in which the 71
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From page 72... ...
THE FIVE DIMENSIONS OF PRIMARY AVAILABILITY Geologic Availability Mineral deposits often have specific associations with geologic terrains and vary in abundance as a function of geologic time; a few examples of minerals and their global geologic associations are listed here. The major source of copper from deposits, known as porphyry copper deposits, are most prevalent around the Pacific Ocean, along the west coasts of South and North America and in the South Pacific islands of Indonesia, and in Papua New Guinea (Figure 3.1)
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From page 73... ...
For example, in the world-class gold belt of the Carlin Trend in Nevada, more than 180 million ounces of gold have been identified since the late 1960s. New discoveries continue to be made as our knowledge and understanding of the mineral deposits advances (Figure 3.2)
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From page 74... ...
, and magmatic RE deposits (black stars) ; RE deposits are only those reported to have greater than 1 × 106 metric tons of contained RE oxides.
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From page 75... ...
Technical Availability Mineral commodities can become more available over time if the costreducing effects of new technologies offset the cost-increasing effects of 75
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From page 76... ...
Concurrently, the introduction of modern electric hoists made underground mining cheaper and safer. Selective froth flotation of metal sulfide ores quickly supplanted gravity concentration and significantly reduced processing costs and increased metal recoveries.
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From page 77... ...
. The mineral resources of many mining districts or geologic regions are not known with certainty.
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From page 78... ...
Navy to develop a full tensor airborne gravity gradiometry system. Both have provided significant advances in imaging potential mineral deposits at depth.
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From page 79... ...
Environmental and Social Availability Objections to the development of mineral resources often focus on the disruption to the local environment and the impacts on communities related to the boom-and-bust nature of historic mining districts. Stories of the gold rushes in California and the Klondike and the resulting shifts in population, inflated prices, environmental damage, and social problems still resonate with the public.
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From page 80... ...
The Poston Butte deposit was initially planned as FIGURE 3.3 Satellite image of eastern Maricopa County and western Pinal County in Arizona covering an area with more than 20 discovered copper deposits. Urbanization has effectively removed copper reserves near Florence from mining development.
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From page 81... ...
The relative rights of the local community versus the national community to benefit from the development of mineral resources are unresolved in many countries. The committee concurs with the MMSD in that the social license to operate at the local community level should ensure that "interactions between the mine and community should add to the physical, financial, human, and information resources -- not detract from them" (MMSD, 2002, p.
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From page 82... ...
the equitable distribution of goods, income, and resources among the host communities and affected people. Political Availability The concept of environmental and social availability, the subject of the last section, leads naturally into, and in fact overlaps, the concept of political availability, which looks more directly at how actual government policies and actions influence mineral availability.
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From page 83... ...
The political challenges of mine nationalization inspired the founding of the Fraser Institute in 1974 as an independent research and education organization based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since 1997 the Fraser Institute has published an annual survey on exploration and mining companies to evaluate how public policy influences exploration investment.
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From page 84... ...
High positive scores on the room-for-improvement metric indicate that the jurisdiction is far from best practices. Details of the survey are in the report Fraser Institute Annual Study of Mining Companies, 2006/2007 (McMahon and Melhem, 2007)
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From page 85... ...
Availability and Reliability of Supply Policy Potential Index Manitoba Alberta Nevada Utah South Australia New Brunswick Quebec Queensland Tasmania Saskatchewan Yukon Victoria New Mexico New South Wales Northern Territory Wyoming Nova Scotia Western Australia Ontario Arizona Spain Nfld./Labrador Idaho South Dakota Alaska Sweden Mexico Chile Finland British Columbia Colorado Minnesota Montana Turkey New Zealand Brazil Ireland Botswana Nunavut Ghana NWT Mali Tanzania Argentina Washington Burkina Faso Wisconsin California India Zambia Peru Ecuador South Africa China Colombia Indonesia DRC (Congo) Russia Kazakhstan Papua New Guinea Philippines Mongolia Bolivia Venezuela Zimbabwe 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 Score FIGURE 3.4 The relative rankings of jurisdictions for the Policy Potential Index.
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From page 86... ...
Mineral resources are categorized as measured (volume and tonnage well established) , indicated (volume and tonnage estimated with less precise information)
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From page 87... ...
of mineral resources which, after the application of all mining factors, result in an estimated tonnage and grade which, in the opinion of the Qualified Person(s) making the estimates, is the basis of an economically viable project after taking account of all relevant processing, metallurgical, economic, marketing, legal, environment, socio-economic and government factors.
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From page 88... ...
MINERALS, CRITICAL MINERALS, AND the u.s. ECONOMY Undiscovered Resource Presumed to exist in geologically favorable Technologic Availability environment Tools/equipment/knowledge exists to explore, extract, process the resource and restore the environment Discovery No Yes Political Availability Laws, policies support Identified Resource - profitable development Exposed through initial drilling No Yes Environmental and Social Availability Community and environment can support resource Reserve - No Yes The resource is economic to develop Economic Availability No Nations support free market development of Yes resources FIGURE 3.6 The availability of a mineral resource is dynamic in the five dimensions of geologic, technologic, environmental and social, political, and economic availability.
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From page 89... ...
The implementation of bulk tonnage mining and processing methods at the turn of the twentieth century by Daniel Jackling allowed lower-grade porphyry copper deposits such as Bingham Canyon, Utah, to be developed. Jackling was an engineer working in the Bingham Canyon mines in 1899 who formed the Utah Copper Company, the predecessor of today's Kennecott Utah Copper Company.
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From page 90... ...
THE FOUR DIMENSIONS OF SECONDARY AVAILABILITY The magnitude of the secondary resource in a particular region depends on past inflows and outflows from the stock of material available for recycling. Additions reflect historical use patterns within the region, product service lives, and imports of scrap for recycling, while removals reflect flows of material recycled within the region or exported to other regions for reuse or recycling.
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From page 91... ...
Imports and exports of end-of-life products and scrap must also be considered. The flow of material available for recycling and the proportion that is actually recycled are the result of many decisions, made over an extended period of time, that influence technical, economic, and environmental and social availability.
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From page 92... ...
Even in a country such as the United States with a mature economy, well-established infrastructure, and modest growth rates, the quantity of material available for recycling may meet only a modest proportion of future demand. Material that is either not collected or not recovered augments the stock of secondary resources and increases the demand for primary material, unless total demand has declined significantly.
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From page 93... ...
Catalytic converters now represent the dominant use of platinum, palladium, and rhodium. Initially that demand could be satisfied only by primary material.
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From page 94... ...
It is clear that although further technological development could enhance material recovery, perhaps the major obstacle to increased recovery from secondary sources is the lack of coherent policies and programs at the local, state, and national levels to increase waste diversion of end-of-life products for material recovery. For example, although recycled aluminum is used increasingly in other applications, recycling of used beverage containers has declined significantly due to lower collection rates (Das, 2006)
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From page 95... ...
For most types of postconsumer products, an efficient collection network and a small number of state-ofthe-art recycling facilities would be sufficient to process all of the material available for recycling. An ad hoc approach that does not permit economies of scale or encourage collaboration at a national or regional level cannot maximize the economic, environmental, and other benefits of waste diversion for material recovery.
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From page 96... ...
businesses may be unable to source sufficient feed to supply new or existing recycling facilities, particularly if domestic supplies decline as a result of changes in global markets and the value chains that supply emerging markets. The United States may thus lag behind the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and other countries as these nations strengthen their ability to access secondary resources, while the most rapidly growing economies secure access to primary resources.
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From page 97... ...
Market forces provide a sufficient and ongoing driver for many resource conservation and recycling activities, generally within a well-established legislative and regulatory framework. Fabricators and manufacturers are motivated to increase material efficiency and minimize waste in order to improve profitability and reduce material input costs, waste disposal costs, and potential liability.
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From page 98... ...
In short, although recycling is already an important economic activity, there is a need to investigate whether more effective incentives and disincentives are necessary to increase recycling and reduce the rate of accumulation of secondary resources in landfills. Economic availability can be reduced substantially when different materials are mixed.
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From page 99... ...
markets are another indicator of possible supply risk. The key insight here is that small markets may find it difficult to increase production quickly if demand increases significantly.
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From page 100... ...
As in the case of thin markets, minerals whose supply consists predominantly of by-products may not respond as quickly to demand increases as other 100
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From page 101... ...
Material in the pool of old scrap exhibits a wide range of recycling costs; some material is of relatively uniform quality and is located close to recycling facilities, and thus has low costs; other material is of uneven quality, perhaps contaminated with other metals, is located at a distance from processing facilities, and thus has higher costs of recycling. As a result, recovery of material from scrap is particularly sensitive to price changes.
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From page 102... ...
One also needs to be cautious in interpreting actual estimates of import dependence. Just because measured import reliance is high does not necessarily imply that supply is at risk.
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From page 103... ...
Reserve development is an ongoing activity at mines, and mineral exploration for previously unknown mineral deposits is an ongoing activity as well. Moreover, technological innovation often makes it technically and economically feasible to extract minerals from what previously was geologically interesting but uneconomic rock -- in effect, converting a mineral resource into a reserve.
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From page 104... ...
Whether evaluation of the mineral supply risk is with respect to long-, medium-, or short-term interests, several of the availability factors often interact to varying degrees, and the associated data used to interpret these factors and their interactions require cautious analysis. The committee reaffirms the conclusion of the report Mineral Resources and Sustainability: Challenges for Earth Scientists (NRC, 1996)
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From page 105... ...
, 2005. CIM Definition Standards for Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves: Prepared by the CIM Standing Committee on Reserve Definitions.
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From page 106... ...
, 1996. Mineral Resources and Sustainability Challenges for Earth Scientists.
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From page 107... ...
U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2006 5155.
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