Copper: a semi-precious metal?
Interesting acquisition with Ariel Copper Prospect. I like the fact that most of the option 'spend' is put out to farther years...gives up time to explore a bit up front.
I also really really like copper. And the copper discoveries in this part of the planet have been elephantine.
Indeed, just across the border, Arizona claims to be the world's second largest copper producing 'area'...after Chile. And the Tucson/SE Arizona has a particular concentration of the state's 400 + producing mines.
Like the Resolution porphyry discovery that claims some 1.4 billion tons. Mines in this part of the world can last for over 100 years.
But what about the copper itself? My take is some smart money been getting bullish on the red metal. Like Teck's CEO Don Lindsay who was on BNN recently.
He noted that China is now up to 28% of the world's copper market with theirindustrial production is growing at 16% (the latest numbers are over 19%...theday after his interview).
Lindsay's 'numbers' say that copper demand looks to grow at between 2.8% to 4% annually.
If that proves to be the case, by 2020 the world will need 47 more"Highland Valley Copper" mines. Highland is Teck's -- and Canada's -- largest copper producer. The largest future copper producercurrently slated to come on stream is Mongolia's OT, which he reckonsis only some 3 Highland Valley's worth of the red metal.
That points to one huge demand for copper.
Lindsay had some other juicy tidbits. Lindsay talks about the fact thatChina is producing 7 times the steel volume of the States. That's 7U.S. economies in terms of steel demand. Got to be good for moly. Manyof these Arizona porphyries have significant moly credits, which is a significant factor in their economics.
And where will all this copper be used?
If you've been following newer applications like renewable energy, you would know that a typical 3.0 MW wind turbine uses over 500 kilos of neodymium, a rare earth metal. Well it also uses 4.7 tons of copper.
Traditional applications like cars use some 55 to 60 pounds (hybrids nearly twice that). Now factor in that China is now selling over one million cars a month. When NIxon visited, they had less than 100 private cars in the whole country! And India's $2.5K Nano is just hitting the streets.
The biggest demographic event of our day is the formation of a Asian Middle Class. And the numbers are so much bigger than what happened in the western world in the decades following WWII.
And it won't happen without copper. Which begs the question: could it be becoming a semi-precious metal?
If you want to dig a bit deeper into Arizona's copper history, google up the Bronco Creek Exploration. Or Bell Copper. A Stanford Phd educated geo -- the guy behind the discovery of Resolution -- thinks he may be on to even a larger porphyry in a Bell project called Kabba. And these guys are drilling it...as you read this.