The Broken Hill Proprietary Company, BHP, comes from Broken Hill, Australia. It is one of the largest mining companies in the world.
Now what is interesting about Broken Hill is I have it on reasonable authority that the area as a whole has had "20 years of remaining reserves" for the last 60 years, because the explorers only bother to go out and 'discover' new parts of the deposit when they get below 15-20 years of reserves.
This is an interesting anecdote to my main point - the cobalt price seems to have jumped like a salmon about 12 months ago, but bringing a new mine online can take about 5 years. Even assuming we don't make this 10 year time frame, who really knows what deposits might have become profitable to mine with even a doubling of the price.
High prices isn't a signal that we have run out, it is a signal that more mines are needed. It is likely the market will heed the signal.
This happens in pretty much every mining and extraction industry. Oil reserves have been enough for about 50 years for the last 50 years iirc. There's no point in trying to find all the reserves ahead of time since your technology will change and things that were previously unviable become viable.
> High prices isn't a signal that we have run out, it is a signal that more mines are needed. It is likely the market will heed the signal.
It is a signal that there is a high demand, and not enough supply (whether naturally or artificially -- e.g. diamonds) to meet that demand. That's it.
Building more mines can only happen if the resources exist to mine. This idea that "the market" is a magic wand to wave at problems really needs to stop. As far as "the market" is concerned, the electric car industry could collapse because it failed to innovate past resource shortages.
In a very real sense, we don't know how many undiscovered resources are out there, we can only estimate them. And the estimates move over time with technological improvement.
Now what is interesting about Broken Hill is I have it on reasonable authority that the area as a whole has had "20 years of remaining reserves" for the last 60 years, because the explorers only bother to go out and 'discover' new parts of the deposit when they get below 15-20 years of reserves.
This is an interesting anecdote to my main point - the cobalt price seems to have jumped like a salmon about 12 months ago, but bringing a new mine online can take about 5 years. Even assuming we don't make this 10 year time frame, who really knows what deposits might have become profitable to mine with even a doubling of the price.
High prices isn't a signal that we have run out, it is a signal that more mines are needed. It is likely the market will heed the signal.