US lacks rare earths

Just a link today, to an editorial comment by a professor of mineral and material science, Dr. Courtney Young, on US dependency on rare earths - and our lack of them.

Ordovician trilobites

Today's post is from my History of the Earth Perpetual Calendar for March 4.

The diversity and abundance of trilobites during Ordovician time was similar to that of the Cambrian. Together with brachiopods, trilobites were the dominant (or most numerous) marine animals in Ordovician seas. Ordovician trilobites seem to have had better developed eyes than their Cambrian ancestors.

The trilobites here are Triarthrus becki (left) and Bumastus trentonensis (right).

Mineral production up in 2011

To the extent that mineral production reflects the economy, it looks like things were improving in 2011. The US Geological Survey released its 2012 Mineral Commodities Summaries, covering 2011, and most metals show significant increase in value.

Gold and copper are usually the leading metals by value produced in the US. In 2008, thanks to low gold prices, the copper industry yielded ore worth half again the value of gold: $9.4 billion vs. $6.7 billion for gold. Copper depends sensitively on the building industry, and with the recession in 2009, its value fell to $6.2 billion while gold held relatively steady at $6.4 billion.

In 2010, the copper business was worth $8.4 billion and gold was at $8.9 billion, but with continuing increases in gold’s price, in 2011 gold was valued at $12.2 billion, surpassing copper’s record value of $10 billion.

Other 2011 commodity business values include iron ore at $6 billion (triple the 2009-2010 amount) and the titanium dioxide industry, at $3.8 billion, surpassing its 2008 rate of $3.7 billion for the first time.

The most valuable non-fuel mineral commodity produced in the U.S. has been crushed stone, holding steady in 2009-2011 at $11 billion, more valuable than gold, copper, or any other metal, but gold took the lead in 2011 for the first time in recent years.

Despite the surge in value for gold produced in the U.S., the nation went from a net exporter of gold to a net importer in 2010-2011, with about 38% of consumption imported. Much of this was raw ore for processing. Copper imports have been fairly steady for the past 5 years at about one-third of total consumption (35% of our copper was imported in 2011).

Tin surging

Cassiterides, north of Iberia--presumed source of early tin.

There’s quite a lot about tin in my book—it’s found on at least 10 pages, and in things as diverse as toothpaste and type metal. There have been some recent changes in some of the salient facts about tin.

Whether or not there’s a recession, according to information cited in this Bloomberg article, we’re about to see nearly 2 billion new cell phones a year. Combine that with more flat-screen TVs and computers, digital cameras, and other electronics, and consumption of tin (mostly for solder) is surging. In my book I quote recent USGS reports that 28% of all the tin used goes to electronics. The Bloomberg article indicates that that value is now more than 50%.

No more than a gram of tin per cell phone, but multiply it by two billion and it all adds up. Production increases (estimated at 0.6% for 2012) are not keeping up with demand increases, and the price of tin could climb in 2012 from around $9-$10 per pound in 2010 to as much as $13 per pound. And consumption is projected to exceed supply by more than 10,000 tons in 2012.

Where does the US get its tin? Apart from recycling and processing scrap, the US imports all its tin. There has been no primary mine production of tin in the US since 1993. Principal suppliers are Peru (more than half our imported tin), Bolivia, China, and Indonesia. China produces almost half the world’s tin, and Indonesia is #2 with almost one-fourth. In addition to electronics, there's tin in your car, in cans and containers (including glass and plastic ones--organotins reduce scratching in plastic), and in toothpaste (stannous fluoride -- stannum is Latin for tin, whose chemical symbol is Sn).

The map here shows an early map of Europe with the Cassiterides, imaginary islands that the Greeks thought to be the source of Phoenician tin. In reality, the tin came from Cornwall, in southwestern Britain. Cassiterite, tin oxide, is the primary ore of tin.

Public domain image from Wikipedia.

Soliciting input

Obviously I haven't posted here in a while; I've been focused on a new book project unrelated to the topics of What Things Are Made Of. It's a book in The History Press' "Lost" series about buildings gone from Butte, Montana: information and blog here.

For What Things Are Made Of (this blog) I'm asking for input from readers: What would you like to see here? Either reply in the comments here, or send me an email at rigibson@earthlink.net with questions or ideas that you'd like to see addressed. Anything within the realm of resources - minerals, coal, oil, etc. - is fair game: geology, distribution, imports, uses, etc.

Thanks for your help and support.

Madagascar

Tourmaline from Madagascar

It’s been a while since I posted. Trip to Kansas, and my dog died, and June-July are absolutely the busiest time for tourism in Butte (I drive the Chamber of Commerce Trolley and lead historic walking tours in one of my other lives).

This post is for another country: Madagascar. Government edicts and other problems can dramatically impact mineral production and trade, and the coup in Madagascar in 2009, combined with the worldwide recession, certainly did not help the mineral industry there. Madagascar had been the world’s leading sapphire producer – but in 2008, the government banned export of rough gemstones. Why would they do that? Because of one specimen, the Heaven’s Gift Emerald. A 536-kg (1,182-pound) emerald in matrix, it was declared a national treasure worth $150 million; the government said its exportation was illegal, although courts ruled otherwise, and the ban on all exports was instituted and continued until mid-2009. By 2010 the gem industry was recovering – led in volume by tourmaline at 43,000 kg produced in Madagascar (compare 2,100 kg of sapphires).

Madagascar produces nearly 3% of the world’s titanium mineral concentrates (mostly ilmenite) but that ranks it #11. Australia and South Africa are the leaders, and the primary import sources for the US, which is 81% dependent on imports. The titanium dioxide pigment industry in the US is valued at about $3 billion, about the 7th most valuable mineral commodity in the US. Titanium dioxide finds its way into products from white sidewall tires to playing cards to Oreo cookies.

Cobalt, nickel, and increasing chromite mining are expected to improve Madagascar’s role in global mineral supplies in the next few years. Vanadium, uranium, and zircon mining may also impact the industry on the island as those reserves begin to be developed.

Photo: Tourmaline from Madagascar, credit: Laurie Minor-Penland (Smithsonian Institution), under CC by 2.0 license.

Everyone has an agenda

Everyone has an agenda. I do too, and because of my background as an oil explorationist it would be reasonable to think I might come down on the side of drilling, mining, and exploiting. Those things are important to modern life – but as a geologist, I also love the earth. I would call myself an environmentally sensitive resource explorer, even though some would say that’s an oxymoron.

In the introduction to What Things Are Made Of, I say the book is not intended to be a polemic against the mining industry – nor does it ignore the environmental consequences of mining. The point is that mined materials ARE used in incredible ways, and the book is a showcase for the necessity of mineral resources and the world's interdependence on their irregular distribution.

The National Mining Association promotes and lobbies for the mining industry. But they also have a great section, Minerals Make Life, whose message is essentially the same as mine: that everything takes minerals, that modern life would be impossible – not just inconvenient, but flat-out impossible – without them.

What eyes are made of

As a geologist, I don’t get too much into biology (except for dead things – fossils). But given my early career analyzing kidney stones, I’ve been fascinated by biomineralization. So I was interested to learn of the first discovery of aragonite eyes.

Aragonite is the orthorhombic form of calcium carbonate, more familiar as calcite, the hexagonal (rhombohedral) type. Both are CaCO₃ but their crystal structures are quite different. There is a rare less stable third form, vaterite, that crystallizes in the hexagonal dihexagonal dipyramidal crystal class and is sometimes found in gallstones. But back to eyes.

The research linked above found that some chiton lenses consist of aragonite crystals. Acanthopleura granulate, the fuzzy chiton of the West Indies, is a primitive mollusk, nonetheless pretty successful in evolutionary terms: the chiton group got its start in Devonian time about 400,000,000 years ago. The West Indies version lives in intertidal zones – so maybe it should be no surprise that aragonite crystallography allows the chiton to focus light equally well through both water and air.

Modern animal lenses are biochemical compounds—proteins—that have evolved transparency. But early in earth’s history, other critters, including trilobites, developed single crystals of calcite as optical lenses. This evolutionary development might have been an important factor in the Cambrian Explosion, the time about 530 million years ago when all the major phyla developed in a geologically very short time. In the Blink of an Eye, by Andrew Parker, explores this idea in depth.

In the industrial world, aragonite sometimes finds uses in glass and cement making, but calcite, far more common, is generally used. Aragonite and calcite both make beautiful collectible mineral specimens.

Chiton photo by Kirt L. Onthank, via Wikipedia under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Why “Drill Baby Drill” doesn’t matter

Here’s why drilling in the US (or almost anywhere else) today won’t make any difference to the price of gasoline this year, next year, or even the year after that – no matter what politicians may say.

It takes a long, long time to find oil fields. It takes a long, long time to develop them. It takes a long, long time to finally get some oil out. The most recent large example I’ve seen is the Hebron field, offshore Newfoundland. Discovered in 1981, ExxonMobil and others are about to develop it. They expect “first oil” in 2017.

Hebron contains an estimated 700 million barrels. The estimated cost to set up the field for production is $C 8.3 billion (US$8.75 billion), and the estimated cost of operations over the life of the field is an additional $C 5.8 billion (US$6.11 billion). I have not found an estimate for finding costs specific to this field, so I’ll start with the estimated US offshore cost (average for 2006-2009) of US$53 per barrel. That would put finding at 53x700 million = $37 billion. That amortizes all exploration expenses including failures, to make an average total cost for actual oil found. But offshore Newfoundland has a relatively low finding cost – and Exxon is a pretty efficient company, so the actual finding cost for Hebron is probably closer to US$7 per barrel, or around $5 billion. So there’s something like just under US $20 billion in costs.

Production rate will be something like 150,000 barrels a day. At $100 a barrel, that’s a whopping $15,000,000 every day. And about 1300 days – under 4 years – to repay the investment. Of course, things like corporate taxes, transportation to market, and so on come out of that, as well as dividends to shareholders. And obviously it could not happen without the huge up-front expenditures. And the patience and money to wait 36 years from discovery to first oil.

36 years is an unusual length, even for offshore oil fields. But 10-15 years is not.

At 150,000 barrels a day, the 700,000,000 barrels would take about 4700 days or 13 years to produce. But it won’t be at 150,000 barrels a day for the entire time – it will ramp up to that point, probably be managed to sustain a production plateau, and then decline. For comparison, Prudhoe Bay, North America’s largest oil field, reached a peak production level of about 1.6 million barrels a day in 1979. It’s still producing, but about 200,000 barrels a day and declining. ExxonMobil estimates Hebron’s productive (economic) life at 46 years, beginning in 2017.

The main point of this exercise is to illustrate that any major oil field discovered today will not impact the price of oil until it is actually produced – in 10, 15, or 36 years from now. When you consider the future, consider that almost all existing oil wells are declining in their production rates, like those in Prudhoe Bay. 525,000 oil wells in the US average about 10 barrels per day per well, and the estimated rate of decline in US production ranges from 3% to 7% per year. If it is 5%, 5% of 10 barrels is half a barrel a year – so in 10 years, on average, the 525,000 wells in the US today will have lost 5 barrels per day per well, so they’d be at 5 barrels a day rather than 10. We’ll have lost 2.5 million barrels a day. You’d need almost 17 Hebron fields to make up that loss.

The Hebron field is an extreme example, but the concepts apply to any large oil discovery in the United States – and large oil discoveries in the United States are very few and far between, and getting scarcer. Drilling or discovery today will have no impact on the price of gasoline for years to come.

Could another Guano War develop?

A significant portion of Chapter 7 in What Things Are Made Of is devoted to phosphorus and phosphate rock, the building blocks of fertilizer and critical for life. The term “peak phosphorus” is only about four years old, but together with rare earths and lithium, global phosphorus supply is gaining mainstream attention.

While some research suggests phosphorus supplies could decline to problem levels by 2035, a recent analysis takes a different view. Either way, irregular distribution—one of the themes of my book—will probably impact phosphorus trade and use.

Phosphate rock ooids from Montana. Photo by Richard Gibson

In 2010, the U.S. imported 15% of its phosphate rock, the highest import dependency in history. The United States was a net exporter most years until about 1997, and imports were generally small until 2010, in part a reaction to the apparent ending of the global recession. All U.S. phosphate rock imports came from Morocco—the little country that owns or controls about three-quarters of the world’s reserves. Morocco and the U.S. produce about equal amounts, at 26 million tons per year (about 15% of world production each). China leads the world in phosphate rock mining with 37% of the total.

The mineral apatite, calcium phosphate, forms phosphate rock. Exactly how these deposits arise is still somewhat questionable, but upwelling ocean currents are thought to allow the chemical precipitation to occur. Other economic phosphate deposits are bird guano; islets off Peru covered with such material contributed to the “Guano War” in the 1860s. Whether demand for phosphate will lead to anything beyond trade wars remains to be seen.

Dumpster Day

Saturday was Dumpster Day in Butte, Montana. It’s a day for recycling, sponsored by United Way, that comes every three months. And every three months the volume of stuff I generate appalls me. I alone threw away (well, saved for this day) four huge dog-food bags full of plastic, crushed to the extent possible, which is not much. Plastic dominates the piles I’ve been saving up, because paper, glass, steel, and aluminum are easier to take to the local recycling bins, which don’t accept plastic. All this plastic isn’t much by weight, but it sure is by volume.

Plastic is the hallmark of the Convenience Society. Easy to make, cheap, recyclable. It shows up in at least a dozen major sections of What Things Are Made Of. I get messages from people wanting to eliminate plastic as a way of saving oil. A nice idea, but not really valid. Plastic’s impact on the environment is a problem, but if we eliminated every bit of the plastic production in the US, it would be only a drop in the barrel of oil consumption.

One 42-gallon barrel of crude oil makes about 44 gallons of product, because during refining volumes increase. Of that final 44 gallons, 1.2 gallons make “feedstocks,” the chemical precursors to plastics, synthetic rubber, paints, petrochemicals, and more. That’s just under 3% of the products made from crude oil. Purists will add the energy cost to manufacture and distribute plastic products, which might get the total of oil consumption related to plastics up to 7%.

The point is that it’s just not that much volume. To conserve oil, forget plastic. A lot of it (such as grocery bags) is made from natural gas anyway, not oil. To conserve oil, drive less.

Bolivia: Lithium capital?

I hope my April Fool’s Day post didn’t bother anyone! Today I thought I’d focus on one country: Bolivia. Bolivia has been in the news as the world’s largest supply of lithium, and increasing demand for lithium batteries in electric vehicles might mean the US will have to cozy up with a government that has not been exactly pro-US lately.

But wait. Bolivia doesn’t produce any lithium; the world production leaders are Chile and Australia, each with about a third of the world’s lithium, and China in third place with about 18%. Chile has half the world’s reserves and China has another quarter. Bolivia isn’t even on the list of producers or those with reserves. What’s up?

It’s the difference between resources and reserves. Reserves – what Chile and China have – are known, established deposits that can be mined economically with today’s technologies and at today’s prices. Resources are known, speculative, and possible deposits that might be producible sometime in the future. Huge lithium resources – a third of the world – are what Bolivia has (or may have).

Bolivia also has 6% of the world’s tin, 6% of the silver, 4% of the zinc, 2.5% of the lead, 2% of the antimony, 2% of tungsten, 1.5% of boron. Of all those, zinc is most valuable to Bolivians, contributing around $680 million a year to the national economy, more than silver ($610 million) and tin ($260 million). But Bolivia’s most valuable commodity is natural gas, accounting for most of the $880 million attributable to fuels.

The most important commodity imported by the US from Bolivia is tin. The US imports about 70% of its tin; the rest is not mined but is produced from recycled materials. Of 37,000 tons of tin imported by the US, 16% comes from Bolivia, placing it #2 as an import supplier after Peru, which supplies more than half the tin imported to the US.

Electrical applications use more than a quarter of our tin, well ahead of the #2 use in cans and containers.