Others are looking further ahead. Braisch said the US DoE is focusing its new research on future generations of CCS, including using fossil fuels to power plants full of fuel cells. That would result in a pure stream of CO2, he said, avoiding the two-thirds of CCS’s cost, which is incurred in separating the gas. Another cost-cutter could be using the CO2 to grow algae, which is then used as animal feed.

Of course, I don’t say that just because such fuel cells would be likely to use my beloved scandium….

But I have a feeling that it’s a legal scam. Not as in a scam about the law, but as in a scam that is legal.

There’s some blokes out there advertising for phone salesmen to sell rare earth metals to the general public.

Nothing illegal about that at all. Very silly of anyone to buy them, this is true, but nothing illegal.

In fact this was done a couple of decades back in the US. Blokes started getting small ingots of germanium and indium made up and selling them using boiler room tactics. Of course the price they were sold at was way above wholesale value. The spread (I think they were willing to buy and sell) was absurd etc.

So, given that I’m almost, almost, certain that anyone who buys from these guys is being ripped off, what actually can or should I do about it?

For it isn’t illegal to phone someone up and ask “Wanna buy some neodimium?”, nor should it be.

But what next?

Demand for rare
earth elements has undergone a sharp rise in recent
years. The price of lanthanum oxide has risen from
US$5 per kilogram in early 2010 to US$140 per
kilogram in June 2011 (DOE 2011).

Please tell me they’re joking?

They’re using a price rise stemming from the Chinese imposition of quotas and restrictions on mining to point to a rise in demand and thus the scarcity of the resource?

Sirsly?

About 15000
tons per year of the lanthanides are consumed
as catalysts, in magnets and in the production of
glasses.

150,000 tonnes, fuckwits.

How Planetary Resources can make a profit.

Without even doing any mining!

Link may or may not work at present….be patient.

contain as much gold, platinum and rare earth metals – such as rhodium

Rhodium isn’t a rare earth metal. It’s a platinum group metal.

The company, which was founded earlier this year and has just 20 employees, said it would combine space exploration with mining to develop a method to extract gold, platinum and other precious metals and minerals from asteroids in orbit around the Earth. It suggested that this could “add trillions of dollars to the global GDP”.

These would be imports from outside the globe and thus in conventional GDP accounting would be subtracted from it.

Further, it would, by however small an amount, reduce metals prices on Earth thus reducing recorded GDP again.

Still a good idea of course for GDP isn’t everything…..

Through submarine volcanic vents along the mid-ocean ridge, it delivers fresh basalt to resurface the planet’s oceans every 200m years, and to drive the moving pavements on which the continents ride at a few centimetres a year, occasionally colliding to throw up features such as the Alps and the Tibetan plateau. These same forces built the Andes and the Rockies, and power the volcanoes that yearly discharge massive quantities of new water, gas and minerals to the biosphere. Earthquakes, too, are a reminder that the mantle is active, and determined to go on pushing us around. The great seams of concentrated mineral wealth – from the copper, tin, silver and gold that enriched the first civilisations to the rare earths and fissile elements that power new technologies – are ancient casual side-effects of the same process.

‘Coz this is still going on of course……

Actually, it would be rather fun, if someone wants to do the work, to make the calculation. We’ve these new minerals coming up from the mantle each year. We’ve a certain rate of consumption of the metals in such minerals each year. “Sustainable” should mean that we’re not abstracing more virgin material (ie, after the effects of any recycling) from current stocks than are being added by this process.

So what is the number for the new copper, new aluminium, new whatever, being added as against current rates of abstraction? Are we in fact mining sustainably?

Only ultra-scarce yttrium, which is used in precision lasers and to stabilise rockets, may present a problem.

It’s not actually that rare. And it’s also a hell of a lot easier to find and refine than the lanthanides are. If you seriously wanted a few tens of tonnes, hundreds of tonnes, on a regular basis this could be set up and running for $10 to $20 million. As opposed to the $300 million that a new supply of the lanthanides would cost. That’s using current technology mind.

That points to the second major deception going on in the ‘China takes all’ dystopias that surround rare earths. The West only relies on China for current production. As the MIT team notes, despite their name, rare earths are not that rare. Though toward half of the world’s reserves are in China, significant quantities also exist in the US and the former Soviet Union. Used up at the current rate, the world’s reserves should last about 870 years – against a figure for, say, copper of 34 years. As the authors of the MIT paper note, known reserves for rare earths are ‘not expected to be constraining in the next 25 years’.

It’s also necessary to emphasise that “reserves” here does not mean total available stocks. It’s a technical mining term being used. These are the amounts that we know where they are, we’ve mapped them, done at least the initial drilling to prove the resource and we know that we can extract them with current technology and at current or likely future prices.

Just as an example, total resources of terbium (which we like very much for CFLs) are of the order of 20 billion tonnes in the Earth’s crust. I don’t know what actual usage is at present but I’d be absolutely amazed to be told that it’s more than 100 tonnes a year globally. Pretty surprised if it was over 10 tonnes in fact.

The real question of course is why is the US getting into a tizzy over this? It’s not a real problem, so why? Well, I’m afraid that it’s all really about US domestic politics and rent seeking. Seeing the beginnings of a moral panic (The slant eyes will kill US industry! It’s just a new variation on the old Yellow Peril stuff) the usual suspects have piled in to demand that government must spend money to solve the problem. That money to be spent on those urging the government to spend money of course.

I could even tell you which Congressman is running it and who he’s using as his merkin and who is paying for the campaign.

In October 2010, the German government approved a new strategy designed to secure the supply of rare earths and other key commodities; and this year, German industrialists have formed an alliance to get hold of rare earths and German chancellor Angela Merkel has signed a deal with Kazakhstan to obtain supply.

And they are an interesting bunch of people. Saw some of them last week. They’ve still not quite got the real point, which is that it is not RE mining that needs to be bucked up, it’s RE separation that does. And that a few millions spent there on new technology would solve the problem completely. But as is, I’ve found, generally true here in Germany the scientists and engineers understand economic arguments very well indeed and those scientists are now convinced. Whether the politicians will be I’m not sure.

Amusingly it would be possible to make Hartlepool the Rare Earths capital of the world. Sadly, despite the hundreds of billions that the government is prepared to spend on fucking windmills, there’s not that couple of million available for basic research on how to make fucking windmills.

No it’s all a bit ethereal at present. I don’t know whether it’s going to happen, I don’t know whether it will happen in any volume if it does and don’t know if it will continue for any substantial amount of time even if that does happen.

However, we reach an interesting problem in transfer pricing and thus the taxation of international business.

The concern is over two minerals that may or may not get exported from a Third World country.

One has a value to a small number of mineral collectors and no industrial value at all. Except to me, to whom it is really quite valuable for industrial purposes. And I emphasise this point: it’s valuable to me for industrial purposes but to no one else for industrial purposes. That industrial value is a great deal higher than the value minerals collectors will put on it.

Why it has no value to anyone else is because they don’t know about it, have no method of processing it and couldn’t sell the resultant product even if they did have the knowledge and the capacity.

I think you can see the problem coming here: how should I value it for the purposes of transfer pricing? For the whole point of such transfer pricing is that it must be valued as an arms length transaction. I should not take account of any internal to my multi-national company (well, we haven’t set that up yet but will if all of this becomes a reality) considerations. I must, under the rules, price the mineral on export from that Third World country at whatever someone else, not me, will be willing to pay for it.

The second mineral is slightly different. This is a well known, traded, market priced ore for a particular two metals. There’s a well known pricing calculation that can be done (you’ve got x% of this metal A, y% of the other metal B, the price is $z per lb of A2O5 + B2O5 contained, delivered Rotterdam duty unpaid where $z is a changeable quoted international price although not an exchange quoted one).

Now, the thing is that this specific mineral from one or two specific places in this Third World country could be (I’m checking to see) worth a lot more to me than it is to everyone else. For this specific mineral from these couple of specific places could also have, in addition to the A+B, some measure of C2O3 in it. The volume of C is small, but the value is hugely higher (like, 40x A+B).

Which makes this mineral worth a great dfeal more to me than it does to anyone else. Again, because they don’t know about it, couldn’t process the C if they did and wouldn’t be able to sell the C if they could.

Now in terms of fairness and economics, minerals are indeed part of the national patrimony. Yes, it is right that national governments get a chunk of the value of those minerals dug up in their jurisdiction. And the big question is, how are we to determine that value aso that the appropriate amount of tax is to be paid?

The answer is, this is the answer urged upon us both by campaigners and by the law, that we should regard that just and righteous valuation as being what would be an open market, arms length, transaction. One that is not between two related entities who are shifting cash around, but between two unrelated entities who are operating in an open market. Which is just fine.

So in order to set the price of this mineral for export from the Third World country I should therefore, in the first case, try selling some pieces to mineral collectors. Go on Alibaba, e-Bay, and see what prices I am offered. This then becomes that just and righteous export price. For the second I should ignore that higher to me value and work solely with the international and published price of the mineral.

Please do note that there’s no offshore in here. There’s no black hole into which excessive profits disappear: all will be taxed, what we’re trying to work out is how much gets taxed in that Third World country and how much gets taxed inside the EU where the minerals will be processed.

But here’s the thing. By obeying the law (and, if you like, the spirit of it) on transfer pricing I am quite deliberately according a much lower value to those minerals than their actual value to me. The profit declared in that Third World country will be hugely lower than the actual profit that will come from the whole process of extracting and processing those minerals.

It’s entirely possible, just to give you an idea of the scale of this, that the observable global value of the second mineral is $20 a kg while the value to me is $80 per kg. Or of the first, $50 a kg to a minerals collector and $500 a kg to me (those are not actual pricings, just illustrations of the scale of the gap).

So, what actually is it that a poor boy like me is supposed to do? Obey the law and thus use an arms length transfer price and so grievously underestimate true value? Or ignore the law and do something else?

Obne possible solution would be that I have to tell everyone else what’s in the mineral, teach them how to extract it and where to sell it when they have done so, create competition for myself and thus enable a true market price to be derived from arms length transactions.

But that would be insane, wouldn’t it?

So what’s the solution?

Allianz zur Rohstoffsicherung

Newly formed, early this year. Alliance of big German companies to secure raw materials. My German isn’t good enough to Google through to actually find them. I can find reports about them, but not actually them.

Anyone with better German able to track them down?

Update: Thanks for your help on this folks. I’ve been pointed to the bloke who is the new MD and have been able to find a PR lady email who should be able to pass on an email to him. Job done so far!

Catalytic converters are stolen because they contain precious metals – platinum, palladium and rhodium – which can be recycled. The AA says it has seen an increase in thefts since the beginning of the credit crunch in 2008, when prices for precious metals started spiralling.

The catalytic converter was stolen from Jane Green’s Land Rover Freelander while it was standing in a car park near her workplace in Wolverhampton. She said: “When I got back to my car, the police had left a note on the windscreen telling me not to turn the car on but to call them as soon as possible. I did and was told a witness had seen a man with a drill around my car.”

Green’s catalytic converter had been removed with a saw and drill, causing damage that cost £900 to repair.

I’m a bit out of touch with the current value but it’s certainly tens of pounds for the scrap value of something from a larger engined car. Decent set of powered shears and a couple of blokes could make off with a couple of hundred quid in an hour or two from a street or car park of more expensive cars.

I’m just surprised that this is the first reference I’ve seen to it of it actually happening.

Stray showers of mercury getting into food chain

Poisonous metal released as a vapour by burning fuel, then falls back to Earth and gets absorbed by the aquatic ecosystem

Given that this has been happening for a century or two and we’re not all murdered in our beds by the pollution, should we conclude therefore that mercury isn’t quite as poisonous as some would have us believe?

Lots of it does kill of course but a little bit spread through the environment not so much?

Rather, I’m just looking for a pointer to how I ought to be thinking about things.

OK, so what I’ve got (conceptually this is) is a tailings/gangue pile.

From a granitic greisen. Originally mined for Sn/W

I know that this tailings pile is 50% very fine material. I’m pretty sure what I want is in the fine stuff, so that’s easy enough.

In there I know I’ve got mica, some scheelite, remains of cassiterite and wolframite. Almost certainly some zircon (umm, zirconite)? Plus lots of other rubbish.

All of these have my target metal to some useful degree, 500 ppm to 3,000 ppm. The granite doesn’t, but most of the other minerals do.

The question is, which way around to try and approach this?

a) Try to separate out the various minerals then put them through traditional techniques? Not worth it for the tin, tungsten etc values, but it is for getting my target metal or

b) Just dissolve (or heap leach, vat leach, whatever) the whole lot and just extract my target metal from the liquor? Then maybe others if it’s worthwhile?

Not that I expect anyone to actually know the answer, but what’s the right way to approach finding the answer?

I’ll have access to a top notch mining university 20 km from the site but I want to try and walk through the right questions to ask before they all laugh at my ignorance…..

Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s third richest man, to challenge Putin

Nickel magnate appeals to angry middle class for presidency – but some claim he is merely a Kremlin stooge

For sale only to close friends of V Putin.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/93028

“On Scandium” by Sir William Crookes, 1908.

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

I’ve read bits and pieces of this. Would like to read the whole thing though.

From what I’ve read so far it holds up remarkably well.

And the New Year may well find me traipsing around the area where he got his scandium from. Looking for scandium, of course.

Update, this paper has been sent to me, thank you v much Andrew!

For somewhere in the PWC system there is a gremlin conspiring to make him look like an idiot.

Rare earth metals scarcity: A ‘ticking timebomb’ for the world, asks PwC?

This has gone out over the wires, as the previous post shows picked up by the Telegraph and there are others as well.

Their list of “metals” which might become in short supply are:

Among the minerals & metals on the ‘critical’ list are:

• Beryllium: used as a lightweight component in military equipment and in the aerospace industry. it is used in high-speed aircraft, missiles, space vehicles and communication satellites.
• Cobalt: a material used in industrial manufacturing. Used in jet turbine engines and automotive rechargeable batteries.
• Tantalum: used in mobile phones, computers and automotive electronics
• Flurospar: used in construction, cement, glass, iron and steel castings.
• Lithium: used in wind turbines and lithium-ion batteries in hybrid cars

None of these are rare earths.

So, once he’s paid me to sub his report and PR pieces properly for him he can then pay me again to point out where vast quantities of all of these materials can be found (except perhaps fluorspar, which is indeed a toughie, but it’s not even a damn metal).

This blog has enough readers in The City that someone must know him and be able to point him my way.

Update: And I’ve managed to find his contact form on the pwc site. Does me good to sneer at someone first thing in the morning I must say.

Rare earth metal shortage a ‘ticking time-bomb’
A “ticking time-bomb” looms over several core manufacturing industries, experts have warned, due to a growing shortage of “rare earth” metals.

Hmm, that’s strange, given that there are several large rare earth mines due to come online in the next couple of years.

What shortage?

Accounts PricewaterhouseCoopers said business leaders in sectors including automotive, chemicals, and energy fear they will be the hardest hit as commodities such as Beryllium, Cobalt and Flurospar become scarcer. The metals are are used as components in items ranging from military equipment to automotive rechargeable batteries.

Those aren’t rare earths and Flurospar isn’t even a metal. Indeed, Flurospar is a proprietary coating technology, the mineral is in fact fluorspar.

Useful in steel making, the important use is as a source of fluorine to make hydrofluoric acid and no, none of those are metals either: fluorine is a halide.

Is it really too much to ask that reporters should have at least a vague grasp of the beats they cover?

The DRC should be one of Africa‘s richest countries. It has a mineral wealth estimated to be around $24 trillion (£15tn). There are huge deposits of cobalt, diamonds, gold, copper, oil and 80% of the world’s supplies of coltan ore – a valuable mineral used in computers and mobile phones.

So, “coltan” is the NGO name for columbo-tantalite. Which is an ore. So “coltan ore” is stupid right from the start.

Secondly, the Congo doesn’t have anything like 80% of the world’s reserves. This is simply a myth which has been repeated so often the idiots actually believe it. It’s more like 8 or 9% (although to be sure, no one’s ever really done a complete geological survey of the country’s minerals).

Thirdly, what the buggery is this $24 trillion number?

Well, what that actually is is the value of all of the minerals after they’ve been dug up, processed and then sold. At current prices and entirely ignoring the fact that if you dumped 9% of global tantalum reserves onto a 1,000 tonne a year global market then tantalum would be worth 3 cents a tonne.

And it’s ignoring the costs of digging it all up and processing it as well.

On which basis I declare the North Sea to be worth $240 billion for the gold in it: ignoring the $1.2 trillion cost of processing it out of the seawater.

Oh, silly me, it’s by Greg Palast.

That’s where they get the bollocks from.

Others, for example the entrant who asked: “What happens if you mix together all of the substances from the periodic table”, appeared more keen to satisfy a burning curiosity.

You get dirt.

Depending upon how you mix them, in what quantities, what the original state was (for example, if you mix your Li, H and O as lithium metal and water you’ll get a much more vigorous reaction than if you mixed them as lithium oxide plus hydrogen) various differently explosive things might or could happen, but the end result is going to be, umm, dirt.

Because that’s what dirt is: the result of mixing all of the elements.

It takes one tonne of rock to produce enough gold particles to fashion a wedding ring.

Blimey, that’s a rich mine, no wonder they’re so keen to get digging in a national park.

A more normal gold mine would be 1 gramme per tonne rock.

And unless you’re at the very cheap end of the market a wedding ring is 5-10 grammes.